Beyond the unions: The Pembillai Orumai women's strike in the south Indian tea belt

Abstract

The article examines an extraordinary wildcat strike led by women tea workers against a giant tea plantation company and dominant trade unions in the south Indian tea belt of Munnar. It employs situational analysis to examine the larger processes that led to the strike, implications for the workers, and to the wider socio‐economic relations in the tea belt. It is argued here that in addition to the exploitative plantation production and the poor implementation of welfare measures, the strike was largely fuelled by and directed against union corruption and the breach by union leaders of egalitarian relations in the workers' society. At the end, the article calls for an understanding of local conceptions of inequality, injustice, and humiliation as forces that have the potency to initiate and intensify labour resistance under exploitative production relations.

Migration and the invisible economies of care: Production, social reproduction and seasonal migrant labour in India

“…Some older Dalit women maintained “permanent” tea‐picker jobs but with severe welfare cuts and others were reduced to “temporary” work status. As they fought for their rights (Raj, 2019), the plantation owners seized the moment to introduce a new, cheaper workforce from eastern India. Where Raj worked, these were Adivasis (men and women) from Jharkhand, brought in as casual workers for just eight to nine months.…”

Can the Dalit woman speak? How ‘intersectionality’ helps advance postcolonial organization studies

“….’ (Interview with Vinitha, Munnar (name changed on request) 4 September 2015), a feeling shared by many interviewed Dalit women (Interview with Selvi, personal interview, Munnar, 4 and 5 September 2015) This gives us the insight that neither the education nor modern democratic state formation have challenged caste defined jobs, not to speak of the precarity of Dalit women, issues to be read along with the larger Dalit critiques of Kerala model of development, wherein Dalits remained outliers and precarious (Raman, 2010a,c, 2017; Devika 2010; Heller 1999; Kannan 1988; Kurien 1995; Rammohan 2008; Ramachandran 1997); although the wages in tea plantations of Kerala are relatively high when compared to the rest of the country, the direct producer gains very little for her labour, the upper nodes in the profit hierarchy enjoy the profits from her hard work. This briefly reflects the unequal distribution of income and surplus along the tea value chain, as in the case of coffee in the Indian south (see Neilson and Pritchard, 2012; Raj, 2019; Raman, 2012b: 459–628). As history enters the era of post-Tataisation, the plantation Dalits expected a difference in their everyday life.…”

“…Those youth who also accompanied their mothers and sisters expressed their wrath by shouting slogans and throwing stones not only to the union offices but also the state institutions, including the offices of Forest Department and Inspector of Plantations. When the struggle drew mass support from the media, particularly the visual media from the second day of the struggle – 6 September – when thousands of Dalit women began raising their slogans against the Tatas, the KDHPCL and the state (see Joseph, Rammohan and Soman 2015; Raj, 2019: 671–689; Raman, 2015a) – the mainstream male-led trade unions and their loyalists turned against the striking women. The police had to arrest those men indulged in violence against striking women; a woman worker attempted self-immolation, while the strike also evolved to incorporate new slogans such as ‘no men no unions’.…”

The politics of dispossession and compensation in the eastern Indian coal belt

“…That a good number of villagers are themselves CCL employees – and thus closer to Budhram in terms of class than to non-employed locals – only exacerbates the inability to instigate protest that circumvents him (cf. Raj, 2019 ).…”