Role of Colonial PResence in Indian Tea Plantion Industry in Assam and Darjeeling

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ROLE OF COLONIAL PRESENCE IN INDIAN TEA PLANTATION INDUSTRY IN ASSAM AND DARJEELING

The William Pitts India Act of 1784 gave the crown the power of guiding the politics of India with as little means of corrupt influence as possible, which in effect established a concrete link between the doings of the East India Company and the approval of the Royal Government, Because East India Company’s products were seen as “necessary” returns for public funds and trust put into the joint stock, the parliament was responsible for raising the finances to pay for the trade, the company’s power to authorize letters and make laws awarded the company sovereign authority of many Indian provinces. The new regime of East India Company served as a precedent for a later tea plantation as the Assam Company and business who utilized manipulation and profiteering methods, the accumulation of personal wealthy was a prime intention, first by 1834, the Waste Land Rules was enacted to allow government granted lands to be free of revenue for 20 years. The legislation marginalized Indian labourers and peasants, the cycle of debt and dependence chained labourers to a life of exploitation.

The essential feature of plantation legislation especially in the early stages of its development was regulated of contract between planters and labourers by which the latter were bound under penalties; to work for the former for a certain period of time, the purpose of the legislations was to guarantee planters the services of their recruits as well as a secure hold over the labourers.

The most grippling examples of exploitation was within the realm of labor recruitment, as the underlying aim sought to keep labor costs as low as possible to increase profits and pers...

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...s were a vital essentiality for women laborers but with the abolition of this act some of these concessions were withdrawn.

Rana Pratap Behal in his work “Wage structure and labor in Assam Valley Tea Plantation” expresses the fact that variation between the wages of men and women were totally arbitrary and discriminatory, women and children were paid less, the hours of work was the same put in by both men and women, moreover women performed most types of work done by men such as hoeing and even pruning, in fact women laborers even specialized in plucking, besides there were no complaints either in official histories or in the Indian Trade Association reports of women performing less work as compared to men, therefore it seems that the variation between male and female wages was created purely on the basis of conventional values of sexual discrimination.

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