Plantation Economy and Regional Development

The pattern of ownership and production structures in tea plantations has changed in recent decades and the emergence of Smallholders is the outgrowth of this new trend in countries like India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Indonesia, Malawi, Nepal, Bangladesh, etc. Now Plantations, in general, cannot be considered as a ‘lopsided development’ of regional economy which grows in isolation from its surrounding regions or areas popularly known as ‘enclave economy’. There seems to be an apparent contradiction and differences between Plantations and Smallholders; it is so because plantations in general and tea plantations in particular have always been associated with large estates along with many fundamental characteristics. Most of the plantations emerged during the financial phase of capitalism, and in India, the first tea plantations started after 1840s. These plantations were started by the foreign entrepreneurs particularly British and were capital intensive and highly mechanized. The workforce was brought by the planters through forced migration, mainly tribes, from Central India. Most of the plantations functioned like enclaves having minimum interaction with the immediate surrounding areas and communities. Unlike the Plantations, the occurrence of Smallholders has brought changes in the plantation system and its geography today. The owner-worker relations in Smallholder gardens have replaced the traditional labour relations that were based on social hierarchy in the estate gardens; sharp division of final production of made tea between farms and Bought-Leaf Factories (BLFs); large-scale units of production (estate gardens) have been replaced by small-scale production; individual ownership (small family farms) of land in lieu of corporate or company ownership; employment of local labour instead of migrated labour and preference of direct recruitment of workers over other methods particularly recruitment through the middlemen, etc. This could better be termed as ‘subaltern economy’ which favours to the local economy and more participatory with the marginal and small farm owners.