Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Life on closed tea plantations on a downhill slide

K.P.M. Basheer

Statetrends Despair, deterioration hang over the mist-laden mountain folds of the High Ranges After all the political hullabaloo about the suicide of tea estate workers in the mountain folds of Peerumade taluk, life for the thousands of `tea families' continues to be bleak and hopeless as the estates remain closed and the workers jobless.

TO KEEP STARVATION AT BAY: As a number of tea estates in Peerumade have become defunct in recent years, women find their earning from goats rearing. — Photo: K.K. Mustafah

Three-and-a-half years after she ended her life, Velankanni still continues to be the symbol of the woes of tea workers in the High Ranges of Kerala where several tea estates have closed in the past six years.

Unable to stand classmates' teasing of her torn uiform, the ninth class student at the Vandiperiyar panchayat high school hanged herself in her parents' humble labour quarters on Pasumala tea estate on October 7, 2002. Her parents had been jobless after the RBT company `abandoned' its estates and factories following the nose-diving of tea prices. Velankanni's suicide brought media attention to the closed tea estates and the hardships of thousands of families living on them. About 20 estates in Peerumade taluk alone have either closed or been abandoned in the last six years, sending nearly 20,000 workers out of job. Jobless and debt-ridden, several workers and family members had committed suicide.

In the wake of Velankanni's suicide, politicians— Oommen Chandy, V.S. Achuthanandan et al— trekked up the Pasumala hill. Some Government measures followed. Each family on the closed estates now gets 5 kg of rice free every week which, though of poor quality, helps to keep starvation death at bay. And, due to the Tamil girl's suicide, hundreds of children on the tea plantations in Peerumade taluk are now able to attend school— they get two pairs of uniform, a bag, an umbrella and books free from the Government.

Closed estates

But, life on the tea plantations continues its downhill slide. Despair and deterioration hang over the mist-laden, verdant-green mountain folds. Wild weeds have crept up the tea plants that need regular care and pruning. Festivals are rarely celebrated on the closed estates; and, there is hardly any wedding.

"Until recently I used to hope that one day our estate will open and we all will get back our jobs," says Murugan, a factory worker at the Bonami Estate owned by MMJ Plantations in Elappara panchayat. "Now, I have no such hope."

Bonami, a 900-acre estate with 500 permanent workers and a few hundred temporary ones, closed on August 24, 2002. "The owners just abandoned the estate," Israel. D, who worked for the estate for 16 years, says. The company, faced with heavy losses due to fall in the price of tea, had defaulted on wage payment for a couple of years before it finally folded. It owed Rs.20,000 to Mr. Israel in wage dues and gratuity. His wife Chella had worked for Bonami for 38 years and the company owed her Rs.46,000.

The majority of the workers' families stay on in the estate's `lines' (labour quarters) as they have nowhere to go. The `lines' are dilapidated and leaking. There is no electricity, no water supply, and no health care. Thanks to the five-kg-a-week free ration, the families do not starve. Some women workers now collect dried dung of stray cattle on the estate to make a few rupees to supplement the free rations. Some others have taken to cattle rearing.

Fall of USSR

In spite of the hard work and low wages, life on the tea plantations used to be peaceful, secure and uncomplicated. Tea states have traditionally been family-employment establishments and, in most cases, both husband and wife found work on the estate. The huge majority of workers are Tamil-speaking. The jobs are passed on to the next generation. Housing (called `lines') was provided by the estate which also took care of water supply, electricity, health care and often children's schooling. Workers' sense of belonging to the estate was deep as, according to a former Tata Tea executive, "tea workers are born, raised, schooled and employed on the estate."

But, the crumbling of Soviet Union gave the `green paradises' their first jolt. The USSR was a captive market for Indian tea and the market vanished with the Soviet nation. Demand for tea fell and the prices fell too. However, according to P.A. Kurian, long-time plantation trade union leader and former Deputy Speaker of Kerala Assembly, it was the liberalisation-globalisation policies of the Government that drove the tea companies out of existence. Because of these policies, cheap imported tea from Kenya, Sri Lanka and other countries flooded the Indian market, sending the domestic prices so low that the estates could hardly cover the cost of production.

Mr. Kurian points out that tea prices for the consumer have not fallen much; but the producer still gets a low price for his produce. "The cartel of large buyers, who sell branded tea at high prices, manipulate to keep the producer's price very low," he alleges. "There is no crisis in tea production; the crisis is in tea marketing which is controlled by large companies." The tea workers were paying heavily for the `wrong policies' of the Government, he complained.

"In 2000, the tea price at auction ranged from Rs.30 to Rs.33 a kg," says Pramod Kumar Singh, general manager of the RBT estates. This was a fall from the peak price of Rs.98 a kg a few years before. But the cost of production remained at Rs.65-70 a kg on his estates, Mr. Singh said. RBT, which owned nine estates and eight factories on nearly 10,000 acres and which employed about 9,000 workers, was the largest tea company in Peerumade taluk. The family-owned company, already sick from mismanagement and a lengthy feud among owners, collapsed under the price crash.

Vazhoor Soman, general secretary of the High Range Estate Labour Union, said though the price crash was the main cause, other factors such as a lack of modernisation of tea plantations, irresponsible unions and inefficient managements also contributed to the closure of estates in the region. Tata Tea, which owned the 22,000-hectare Kanan Devan estates in Munnar, in a smart move, handed over the ownership to the workers to save itself from huge losses, he said. Mr. Soman, armed with a provision in the Tea Act, went to the Kerala High Court seeking a direction to the Central Government to take over the closed estates. A parliamentary committee also recommended a Government takeover. The Government said it had no such plans.

`Takeover' by unions

But, most of the closed or abandoned estates in the High Ranges have now been `taken over' by the trade unions. Each estate was first shared among the unions representing five or six political parties. Out of its share, each union allotted a certain number of plants, or a certain extent of the estate, to each worker who was a member of that union.

The workers pluck the leaves and sell them to the agents of other tea factories. The workers now get roughly Rs.6 a kg of green leaves; a share of it goes to the union concerned. However, it is the party leaders who decide to whom the leaves should be sold. It is an open secret in the High Ranges that the party bosses get fat cutbacks on the sale of leaves. The parent party following frequent complaints of kickbacks recently took a senior trade union leader off his `estate duty'.

Alcoholism, AIDS

A large number of men on the closed estates have taken to the bottle. "Please do something to put an end to our men's drinking habit and save our families," a group of women in Kozhikkanam estate pleads. Women, naturally, have been the worst victims of the estate closures in the High Ranges.

Unemployment has forced hundreds of young men and women to find work outside the security of the mountains. But, some of these people returned home with the HIV virus. On two estates in the Elappara panchayat area, three persons had already died of AIDS. G. Babulal, medical officer at the panchayat primary health centre, said an intensive awareness campaign was on to prevent spread of HIV in the area. Extreme poverty has also forced many women on the High Range plantations into sex work. The bad reputation that followed keeps men from looking for brides in these areas.

And, gloom and despair continues to hang over the tea gardens.

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