A Tamil Nadu government order issued in October this year to hand back tea plantation land to the Forest Department has caused anxiety and concern among plantation Tamils in Sri Lanka. The leaders of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC), who represent a majority of the plantation labourers in Sri Lanka, asserted that the land had been demarcated and used for tea plantations to rehabilitate repatriated workers from Sri Lanka.
The order, GO (Ms) No. 173, issued on October 3, 2022, by the Environment, Climate Change and Forests (FR.8) Department, states that “the cost-cutting sector, Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation Limited sent a cost-cutting proposal cost-cutting portion is facing severe financial crisis…. One of the main cost-cutting measures proposed… is handing over some unmanageable, unproductive and wildlife interface areas of the Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation Limited to the Forest department.”The GO states that if land to the extent of 2,152 hectares is given back, it will reduce the lease/rent liability of the corporation by Rs.598 lakh annually. “The balance plantation area can be managed effectively with the existing permanent workers/contract workers,” it said, adding that the workers would be redeployed or covered under a voluntary retirement scheme. The areas affected include Naduvattam, Valparai (with factory closure), Coonoor, Kothagiri, Pandiar, Cherangode, Nelliyalam, and Cherambady. Valparai has the largest estate in this group (1,069.308 hectares) while Nelliyalam is the smallest in extent (14.23 hectares).
This move does not present much of a choice to many workers because the GO makes it clear that the redeployment will be at a place far away from their current estate. For instance, the workers in Valparai will be relocated to Coonoor or Wayanad. The State government has accepted this proposal, says the GO signed by Supriya Sahu, Environment Secretary, who was in charge of the plantations earlier. Asked about the government order, A. Raja, MP and DMK leader, confirmed to Frontline that it had been issued. “The clause guiding the lease of land stipulates that if no cultivation has been undertaken in a leased land for three years, it would be automatically given back to the department which parted with the land,” he said. He criticised the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government, which was in power for two terms of neglecting the plantations and running them to the ground.
“There is a lot of work to do and we are beginning with a feasibility study on how to make Tantea profitable,” said the MP, who represents the Nilgiris, a major tea growing area in the State. He said no plantation Tamil would be evicted. “They will be given retirement benefits.” Since the government has decided to implement the order, it appears that the plantation labourers in these estates might indeed be displaced yet again. Down the ages, the families of these persons have suffered at least three major relocations—when they were taken to Sri Lanka as indentured labour in the last century and earlier, when the British ruled India; when they were sent back to India as part of a deal between India and Sri Lanka; and now, after the estates are closed.
CWC’s concerns
Leaders of the CWC said that since the repatriation was a deal between two countries and made via two bilateral agreements—the Shastri-Sirimavo pact and the Indira-Sirimavo pact—tea estate land marked for the rehabilitation of plantation labourers cannot be rescinded. Both accords specified the number of people that India would “take back” from the plantation areas of Sri Lanka. Soon after Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948, it refused citizenship rights for plantation Tamils and demanded that India take back over five lakh such labourers, almost all of them Tamils.
The “Agreement on Persons of Indian Origin in Ceylon”, which was signed in October 1964, was criticised then by Tamil leaders in Sri Lanka, including S.J.V. Chelvanayakam. The Indira-Sirimavo pact, signed in June 1974, was a follow-up to the Shastri-Sirimavo pact (1964). By the 1980s, only less than half of those intended for repatriation actually made the journey back. Many faced a lot of trouble (see “Letchumanan’s story”, Frontline, January 3, 2020). The plantation labourers in the tea estates that the Tamil Nadu government intends to shut down are repatriates from Sri Lanka.
The government-owned plantations in Tamil Nadu, belonging to the Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation (TANTEA), were set up to give employment to the repatriated plantation Tamils. Though not all of them were accommodated in these plantations, those who were sent there were also given homes near the plantations, which too they will lose now.
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