Tea pickers returning with sacks of tea in Munnar, India. jonbrew/Flickr. Creative Commons.
Tea plantation workers are one of the most stigmatised and marginalised communities in India. While the majority of workers on the plantations in the northeast were originally brought from Bihar, Orissa and Nepal, it is Tamil-speaking Dalits (so-called untouchables/outcasts) who constitute the majority of the labour force in Kerala, south India. Their outcast social status has combined with their identities as manual labourers—also known as Tamil coolies—to perpetuate their economic underdevelopment and social marginality. Although Kerala has undertaken many reforms to address marginalised populations, those who entered into the indentured plantation labour system have remained excluded and marginalised from Indian society as a whole.
On plantations themselves, however, the picture is more complicated. Until recently, plantations operated as semi-autonomous socio-economic systems that were largely separate from the wider economic and cultural contexts in which they operated. This isolation afforded tea workers some protection from direct, daily exposure to stigma and discrimination on the basis of caste. Plantation workers, after years of struggle, were even provided with certain welfare measures such as housing and healthcare. Such privileges are not enjoyed by informal sector workers, even those who belong to less stigmatised and excluded groups, and access to these rights gave tea workers a sense of worth within the plantation system.
