Plantations

Less known contributions of plantation community

The plantation community in Sri Lanka has been playing a significant role in the country's economic growth and political stability. The majority of them are ethnic Tamils migrated from South India during and after 1830s. They have settled and are a productive labour force in tea and rubber plantations for decades

Dr N Yogaratnam Chairman, Tree Crops Agro Consultants

Their participation rate in plantation work had been around 45% and was also characterized by high participation rate of over 43.45%, among females compared to the other sectors. However, in the recent years, the labour force participation rate of this sector is also decreasing due to the emerging trend of greater emphasis on education over employment at a relatively younger generation.

Social status

Though Tamil plantation community has been politically mobilized as a key player in the contemporary national politics today, it still remains as one of the socially excluded, poverty stricken that represent distinct form of culture of poverty. As far as poverty and vulnerability is concerned only a small proportion of the plantation community has acceptable living standards.

According to a recent study, although the plantation community can be divided into three socioeconomic groups based on their income levels yet, the destitute poor cover over 45-50%. Overall, sociologists believe that the non economic factors such as social capital and basic social arrangements such as proper education, health care and sanitation contribute to perpetuating poverty among plantation community than economic factors.

Worker's contribution

The 140 year-old tea industry has been contributing immensely for the development of the social welfare sector until the 1970s and today it is an important sector of export earnings, but unfortunately the country is not in a position to bring the workers in this sector to the level of the average man and women who are living in the rural sector of the country.

As an example, let us look at a tea plucker's story. A woman will be registered for regular work at the age of 16. From that age, she works till her 60 in the tea field plucking tea. Tea plucking becomes her part and parcel of life. Within a short span of time her skills of tea plucking becomes evident with the quantity of the harvest and the quality.

Practice makes perfection. At an average a plucker makes a harvest of anywhere between 20-25 kgs depending upon the season. The estate management after deliberations with the Trade unions fixed a minimum quantity of harvest and this was 18 kgs( Collective Agreement 2002), but now this is expected to be much higher for incentive payments. A women worker at an average works for 280 to 300 days in the tea fields. Going by this, a plucker's average contribution to the estate would be Rs 1,911,600 (Average auction price per Kg, Rs 354 X18X300).

Though this is a crude and not an accurate estimate in terms of real figures, it is shown here to get the value of an average women who works throughout the year in a tea estate. When it comes to the FOB price, this figure goes further up. The output of tea is not only with the contribution of a tea plucker,

it involves preparation of the tea fields, planting, pruning, and then in the factory the manufacturing process. All these are done by the estate workers. This just highlights the contribution of the workers to the tea industry

Business outside tea plantations

It is also significant to note that the country's largest labour force still lies with the tea industry. This is one of the highest sources of employment in the country. There has been an increase in the population of the workers which continue to have an impact on the resource base and employment availability in the tea sector. As in the other countries, in Sri Lanka too there has been heavy inclination of the workers to get their children educated. Education was at high priority for all the workers.

The political leadership too gave importance to this. It is also triggered by the fact that the tea plantation areas remain largely depended upon the tea economy and the land available for other production opportunities remain scarce and capital investment for furthering in to other economic production has not been forthcoming.

The development programmes were not focussed to improve the opportunities for economic production and market expansion of other production related industries in the tea plantation areas that would give the youth a wide range of choices for their employment. Though there is vast potential for development of other industries given the natural resource base, the investment by successive governments and private sector had not been forthcoming.

Therefore, formal education was of the high priorities and Education has been one of the central focuses by the political leadership in the tea plantation areas in the past decades. The sizable donor capital by some countries in the area has had positive impacts on the primary and secondary level education. Though this did not meet the emerging job market, there was outward migration of youth from the Tea plantation areas to urban cities in search of better employment opportunities.

This outward migration commenced as early as mid 1960s. There were by this time number of commercial establishments in Colombo and other urban areas owned and run by Indians. Finding jobs in these areas was easy and the numbers who came in search of such opportunities increased every year with known contacts of one and another increasing. The earnings of these youth outside the plantation system increased the desire of others of their age to come out of the plantation system. The contribution of the youth to the urban economy too increased.

No big burden to the state

Although the plantation system was highest in terms of source of employment, the employees, however, were no big burden for the Sri Lankan state. The plantation workers were taken care by the system itself, from the British planters to the local planters employed by the government after 1972 to 1993. In 1993 the plantations were privatized under 22 Regional Plantation Companies. The welfare and social development yet was with the private companies and supported by the bilateral donor countries.

There were no state run health centres, schools until the workers were empowered with voting. This indicated the reduced expenditure for the state to maintain the large workforce. Further the workers were not keen in remitting the earnings back to their country of origin, though the geographical proximity encouraged doing so. Only the supervisory category and businessmen transferred a portion of their earnings to the mother country.

This however became impossible by legal means after closing the economy. Though the economy was liberalized in 1978, remitting of earnings back to India was almost impossible. Therefore the earnings and savings, whatever were, reinvested in the country itself. Those who managed to save expanded their wealth by purchasing assets in and around the plantations, and establishing business and trading. This further provided for expansion of the economy in the areas of plantations. It also led to employment opportunities in and around plantations.

The plantation youth found a special place for their honesty and hard working in cities and across all communities. The less dependency to some extent solved the unemployment problems in the tea estates but also created less availability of labour in some other estates, constraining the tea production itself. Today there is a dilemma in some major tea plantations for want to labour to work in the tea plantations.

The technical skills of tea plucking which transcends to generations with a female worker are not matched by any other community even with proper training. Such technical skills are now being recognized, giving due dignity to the workers who are and have worked for the betterment of the tea plantation for generation. Special programmes had been and are under way to transform the tea industry in to a modern workforce with social recognition and dignity so that the industry sustains with improvement in the life of workers as well. Though this is the case in some selected Tea Plantations, large number of plantation companies is yet to come up with such programmes.

Conclusion

The economic contribution by the tea plantations have been studied widely though exclusive contributions made by the plantation workers have been little documented and highlighted. Besides the plantation system, they are conspicuous in the other industries that provide significant contribution to the national gross domestic product and provide employment to all communities in the country.

The contribution by them outside the plantation system has not been calculated and their economic value is less measured. There is a great need for such documentation which should be taken by NGOs and other interested academic institutions.

Plantations have played a key role in national and regional politics in Sri Lanka. They have contributed for stable governments when at times the governments in power were at crisis. During difficult periods when the governments have faced turmoil and instability, the political parties in the plantations have come forward to support the governments which have helped greatly for maintaining law and order as well as political stability..

Some complexities have however had negative impact of the plantation youth. One major negative is the increasing loss of identity and also for a long period suffered the backlash of the ethnic conflict. Even with these constraints they have shown great restraint and helped safeguard country's sovereignty, peace and stability.

It is important that serious attempts are made to make a full appraisal of the plantation community's contribution taking all sectors of their involvement. This will elicit their strengths in Sri Lanka's economic and social status for further upliftment of the majority of the workers from the weaker section.

Also, Sri Lanka has attracted much attention as a country in which women have unusually favourable positions in society and in political field when compared to other countries of the SAARC region but the plantation women have been neglected and marginalized by development programs. Their work has been undervalued and underestimated. The economic contribution plantation women make has not been fully recognized, although they tend to have multiple of roles.

The Sri Lankan plantation sector is still facing many challenges one of which is the lack of manpower. One of the main reasons for this shortage is the youth reluctance to engage in plantation. In order to address the youth employment problem one has to go through the policy cycle of problem identification and analyze the existing systems and has to redesign the policies to come out with new strategies by all the stake holders.