Jobs in Nilgiris estates now migrant workers’ cup of tea

If the eucalyptus and the durian fruit are nature’s gift to The Nilgiris, the queen of hills, add one more to the list – the fragrant tea, which is famous worldwide for its exquisite taste.

The quality of these leaves can be attributed to the soil and climate unique to these hills, but there is a more interesting story, one about the toil of thousands of workers involved in plucking, drying, treating, processing and making the tea market-ready.

The industry has a brother in Valparai, the neighbouring hill town where a majority of the families are dependent on tea estates for livelihood. From a few lakh tea estate workers in 1950s, the number has alarmingly dwindled to a mere 30,000 workers now in Valparai.

The fall is equally worrisome in The Nilgiris, as many estates in the hill district face an acute labour crunch.

“Workers involved in plucking tea leaves are living under inhumane conditions, without proper healthcare system.

Their lives haven’t improved even one bit over the decades due to poor wages. Unable to make ends meet, many families are continuing to move out of

The Nilgiris and Valparai hills to the plains in search of greener pastures,” said former Valparai CPI MLA M Arumugam.

“The tea industry was nearly crippled a few years ago due to severe shortage of labourers, as farmhands, particularly women, opted to work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Fortunately, the situation has improved now due to a shift from MGNREGS towards infrastructure development works. Though the issue of the labour shortage is far from over, the influx of migrant labourers has helped in a great way to tide over the crisis,” said B Venugopal, founder of Nilgiris Small Scale Tea Growers Awareness Centre.

In both Valparai and The Nilgiris, now a majority of workers are migrant labourers from states like Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal. Almost half of the 30,000 tea estate workers in Valparai and a major chunk out of the over two lakh workers in The Nilgiris are from other states.

Despite working in an industry which is touted to be the lifeline of the local economy, the problems that the tea estate workers face are aplenty. “Of the few lakh workers involved in the tea industry from plucking to processing jobs in The Nilgiris, only 7,500 are registered under the Labour Act, which makes them entitled to benefits under labour welfare laws. While the registered workers are entitled to medical and retirement benefits, others are always at the mercy of the estate owners and employers,” said Venugopal.

After working for more than 10 hours a day, the tea estate workers carry home a meagre wage of Rs 306 in Valparai.

This amount was fixed as a minimum daily wage after several rounds of negotiations between trade unions and estate owners. “The government failed to fix minimum wages for the labourers over the last several years. In 2008, the then DMK government had fixed Rs 131 as minimum wages, which was revised to Rs 184 in 2011. For the past seven years, the rates remain static for them,” said Arumugam.

Afraid of losing their jobs, workers refrain from raising their issues. Ironically, even these jobs are not permanent, as many get work only during the peak season.

“The harvest will be usually high for a few months during post-monsoon seasons (Southwest and Northeast), when more workers will be engaged in plucking tea leaves. But during the lean months, the workers, especially women, go jobless,” said Venugopal. Apart from these issues, the increase in human-animal conflict and resultant deaths have also been driving away the traditional workers in search of other jobs. India produces about 1,200 million tonnes of tea, of which a whopping 200 million tonnes come from The Nilgiris.

Behind each tea leaf is the story of thousands of workers working in the lush green estates in those hills.