Paradise lost....

Ever since my childhood, tea gardens held a special place in my heart. Maybe it was the fresh green colour, or maybe it was the undulating hills with velvety tea plants creating a magical green carpet on both sides of NH 37…

And then there were the Manager’s bungalows…

It was the ultimate relic of the Raj. Sprawling bungalows attended by an army of well-trained servants: vegetable gardens to supply the kitchen with an uninterrupted supply of fresh greens. I heard my Uncle, who was a manager in a tea garden in Tezpur, talk about the clubhouse where he went for the evening "snifter" at the bar, or for a game of tennis or badminton. He regaled a rapt ‘non-tea’ audience about his stories of weekends spent out in the jungles for organized shikaar-cum-fishing trips.

As I grew up, I realized that governing this idyllic life-style was two leaves and a bud, the ubiquitous symbol of Indian tea (এটি কলি দুটি পাত). Whether in the rolling plains of Assam, or the Dooars in West Bengal or in the mist-shrouded hills of Darjeeling, life in the tea gardens seemed suspended in time. As I started growing up and began reading about these green expanses, I came to know more about the extended legacy of the hard-living, hard-drinking Scotsmen who first planted and cultivated the stunted green shrubs that made Indian tea a legacy.

Up till the late my childhood (read ‘early and mid 1980s’) tea garden labourers treated managers and assistant managers like minor gods whose every word was a divine command - labourers referred to managers as “sahaab”. Salaries and perks for tea planters were far more attractive than comparative appointments in private sector companies (at least this is what I deduced from their lifestyles).

Though social life revolved around the clubs, there was something for everybody. Games included billiards, golf, tennis, squash, football and cricket. There were movie shows and regular dances with live bands organized by the wives. Yes, the ‘wives’ were a force to reckon with. Stylish demeanor, backless blouses, rummy, et al..In most estates, regular weekly charter flights arrived from Calcutta loaded with foodstuffs and anything else planters wanted to order. Moreover, if sports and socializing - both synonymous with tea estates - have started fading out it is because of the kind of people who have started joining the gardens in recent years. Almost all the professionals who are now getting in belong to middle class backgrounds: to them the kind of life-style that existed 15 years ago on the estates is totally alien. Their wives would rather stay at home and watch video or television whereas in the old days, it was the women who played a major role in organizing the social life.

But it was an anachronism, an era that had to end.

Before Independence, tea companies were almost wholly owned by the British and young men were brought in to look after the estates all the way from England. Hardly any planter would miss an evening at the club. Even Indian planters made it a point to participate because British bosses ensured that their assistants were active at work, on the playground and in the clubs. Dancing, drinking and generally living it up were images synonymous with planters.

Today, for an old planter, the sight at the Dibrugarh District Planters' Club on a Saturday evening would indeed be heartbreaking. There are normally hardly a dozen planters at the bar and even less playing any kind of game. But that is symbolic of the dramatic change that has overtaken tea garden life. By the early '70s, with even the most die-hard British planter having left, life on the tea gardens became, almost overnight, a case of paradise lost.

The change was hastened when British-owned companies sold out to Indian owners, mainly hard-headed, profit-oriented Marwari businessmen. With the change in management - and the sudden competition in international markets that Indian tea faced - the old life-style of the tea planter was doomed.

As some of my relatives involved in tea garden business now tell me, there is little time for recreation now. There is too much paper work. In the mid-'40s, there were nine golf courses maintained by tea clubs in Cachar district alone. Now, tall grass and weeds have claimed them. Interestingly, even the traditional afternoon "lie back" has become a memory. A job on the estates today is a high-pressure one. When the British were in charge, working as a planter was a way of life. Now, it is just another job.

More important, they want quick results. Within the last decade, there have been sweeping changes in the gardens. Most of the new recruits are engineers, agriculture graduates and computer professionals. Today, companies are only interested in the quantum of work completed, production figures, rising profit graphs and projections for the future. Working hours have stretched to unimaginable levels. Apart from dealing with the labour and filing countless government returns, more time is taken up by the factories which work longer hours than before. Moreover, improved agricultural practices have helped stretch the plucking season to nearly 10 months a year.

The change in life-style has a lot to do with the pressures of the market-place. Today not only is international competition intense, even within the country, consumers have become quality conscious. You can no longer flog any quality of tea. It has become a buyer's market.

It isn't as if there aren't profits in the tea business. But employers seem to feel that the tea planter now need not live the kind of life that his British predecessors used to. Traditional perks too have been a major casualty. In numerous cases, owners have moved into the palatial houses that managers formerly lived in, compelling their own employees to shift to smaller accommodation. Assistants are now made to share bungalows. And the changes have started taking their toll. One example; the heavy turnover among new recruits. Most youngsters who join tea gardens leave even before their probation period is over. The aura of authority and power that surrounded the managers and assistant managers has also faded. The boot is now on the other foot. Secluded as their houses are, a sense of insecurity haunts managers, several of whom have become targets of dacoities.

The traditional system of having a 'garden banker' - usually a local money lender - to conduct transactions has been done away with by some management to save on commission. They now expect their managers to withdraw huge amounts from the bank and carry the cash to the garden on salary day. The days are well known and managers are known to have been waylaid and looted.
But even more than criminals, it is problems of labourer that plague managers. In Assam, until quite recently, the tea garden workers were a peaceful lot. True, they were unionised, but they were fairly well paid. Now, the scene is different - inter-union rivalry, aggressive workers and, for the managers, a major headache. In a tense situation, the manager is the only voice of the owners and predictably, the major target for physical attack.

Clearly, the glamour of the tea estates is gradually fading and, in another few years, there may be little to distinguish the tea manager's job from that of his counterparts in the city.