Abstract
This book begins by recognising the fact that while the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991 brought about remarkable overall growth, many sectors of the economy, including the crucial agricultural sector, have been going through a crisis. This dichotomy within the economy is acutely felt in the informal sector which provides employment to nearly 90 per cent of the workers in India, out of which 70 per cent are poor. The book highlights that these are indications of the predicament wherein the burden of adjustments of integrating with the global economy would be disproportionately shared by the poorer section of our working population.
Within this broader conceptual framework, the book attempts to understand some important dimensions of labour market characteristics in tea plantations of Assam. Although the tea sector is part of the organised sector, it is characterised by large-scale informalisation and casualisation of labour. In the recent decades, the Indian tea sector, of which Assam is the major constituent, is going through a crisis leading to closing down of tea gardens and retrenchment of labour. The study focuses on the tea labour market and the implications of the ongoing crisis of the sector on these labourers and their families.
The study is based on both primary and secondary data. For the collection of the primary data, three tea producing districts of Assam were selected, out of which one garden from each of the districts was randomly selected. Similarly ex-tea garden labour settlements were chosen from the vicinities of the tea gardens. The methods adopted for the study and its sample size and the spatial distribution are good enough to give a representative picture of the conditions of labourers in the tea gardens of Assam. The small tea gardens, which have come up in large numbers in the rural areas in Assam, especially in the areas nearby the big tea gardens in recent decades, were kept out of the purview of the study.
The book is well organised. It has six chapters, including ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’, dealing with theoretical and empirical as well as global and local dimensions of plantation economy in general and the tea plantations in particular. The book gives a detailed account of the growth of the tea industry in Assam and the crisis it faces in the contemporary times. The tables included in the book represent the various aspects of the tea plantation sector and provide a good idea about the sector in a comparative perspective. The Plantation Labour Act, 1951, included in the appendix also enables the reader to compare between what the Act promised and what the prevailing realities are in the tea garden areas of Assam.
Although the book is not about the crisis of tea gardens, it nevertheless deals with this question, which is closely linked with the issues relating to the conditions of the tea garden labourers. It rightly identifies that the crisis in the tea sector is not witnessed in domestic market and that it is seen in the loss of export share which is often attributed to the lower cost of production in other tea-exporting countries. However, the book argues that although growing competition from the other tea producing countries has contributed to India’s loss of export share, the main cause of the crisis in the tea sector could be because of the lower productivity owing to lower investment by the management. While it may indeed be pointed out that while lack of investment (towards replenishing old tea plants, mechanisation, organic farming, etc.) is the root cause of the present crisis in the tea sector, it is not only low productivity but also the low quality of tea that has become the undoing for the Assam tea in the international market. Although the growth of a large number of small tea plantations in Assam in the last quarter century have added to the overall quantum of tea production, they have also not been able to address the concerns about quality due to lack of adequate knowhow about scientific production of tea suitable for international market which has become too sensitive about health and environmental issues. Again, although there has been a decline of tea production in large- and medium-sized tea gardens, often the tea leaves produced by the small tea gardens are thrown away as the big plantations refuse to buy them citing lack of demand.
The book throws light on several important dimensions of labour and employment in tea gardens. Although according to official data, the percentage of child and adolescent workers in the tea industry has declined in Assam in recent times, it is still high compared to the tea gardens in West Bengal and South India. As a result of decline in the percentage of child labour since 1991, as the book shows, the percentage of adult labourers, male and female, has increased in the tea industry. But the growth of male workers is seen to be far higher than the female workers. The book argues that this could be due to the fact that with shrinking employment opportunities female casual labourers are facing difficulty in finding work in tea gardens.
The book observes that the labour market in tea gardens is heavily tilted towards the demand side and seeks to explain this fact. The tea garden workers, originally brought as indentured labourers from central and eastern India, confine themselves mostly to the low paying casual works within the tea gardens, creating a huge available labour pool for the tea garden management. This enables the latter to retrench labour easily to cut down labour cost, in the face of competition in the market. The study thus shows that the main victims of the market fluctuations in labour demand conditions have been the casual labourers.
The book also looks into the very important issue of lack of mobility among the tea garden and the ex-tea garden workers in terms of diversification of sources of earnings and employment. Although the ex-tea garden workers have left the tea gardens, they continue to live in close proximity of the tea gardens and considerably depend on the latter for employment as indicated above. However, the study points out to the fact that while among the tea garden households many adults find or look for work outside tea gardens, those from ex-tea garden households also find and look for work within the tea gardens even as the main breadwinners of these households stick to employment in the tea gardens and outside the tea gardens, respectively. The jobs outside the tea gardens are mainly limited to agriculture (as small cultivators or labourers) and the casual work outside agriculture. Within the tea gardens also one hardly finds any member of the labour households even in the clerical jobs, not to talk of the managerial jobs. The study shows that there is virtually no vertical mobility among the tea garden labourers within the gardens. Despite this, the study finds that the permanent tea garden workers are relatively less inclined to change their occupation. This may be attributed to certain facilities and social security that a permanent tea garden job entails. However, the casual workers within the tea gardens are not averse to a change of occupation. Unfortunately, the alternatives where they can get absorbed are very limited in the local economy.
The book finds that it is not choice but compulsion which explains the overdependence of the tea and ex-tea garden labourers on work within the gardens. It identifies a number of factors constraining the diversification of employment among the tea garden workers. The significant among them include lack of education, lack of financial capital, poor connectivity, especially in case of the tea gardens located in remote areas, apprehension of social exclusion, relatively better social security provisions in the gardens, etc. Among all these, lack of education seems to be the single most responsible factor affecting the vertical mobility as well as diversification of employment among the tea garden community. The book brings out the deplorable state of the schools in the tea gardens of Assam, although every tea garden has a school in name. It appears that the garden management never wanted to facilitate proper schooling among the children of the tea garden workers with a view to ascertaining that they remain incapable of unshackling themselves from the overdependence on tea garden employment, a condition which overwhelmingly favours the management.
Interestingly, in recent times, the small tea gardens, coming up in large numbers in the rural areas of Assam, have absorbed a large number of labourers from tea garden as well ex-tea garden households as casual labourers. A majority of such labourers are women and children. Clearly the child and female labourers who are out of work within the tea gardens now constitute the main workforce of the small tea garden sector, a sector where pay and service conditions are inferior to the big tea gardens. This aspect, however, was not looked into by the study as it was out of its purview.
The findings and observations of the book are not unknown or surprising. The merit of the book lies in its coming out with strong quantitative data and empirical evidence to support these observations. It is also to the credit of the book that it has brought about many nuances pertaining to the questions under study, often glossed over by narratives indulging in quick generalisations. The book is an important contribution to the existing literature on the economy of tea gardens of Assam, if not India, especially with reference to the questions of nature of employment and occupational mobility among the tea garden workers.