This section mainly deals with the expansion of
the plantation sector and its impact on economy after the independence of Sri
Lanka. The labour component in the plantation industry is also looked at in the
latter part of this section.
Nicholas Kaldor, a visiting economist, National
Planning Consul, Sri Lanka in the late 1950s remarked that "Ceylon owned
its present prosperity in comparison with other countries in the region, to the
plantation economy." and went to the extent of even suggesting that
"it is the further development of the plantation economy which provides
the means for a rapid increase of Ceylon national wealth.”
Sri Lanka needed to raise her foreign exchange
earnings to enable her to expand employment opportunities in all sectors. Since
the plantation crops were considered to be the biggest foreign exchange earner,
continued development of this sector essential for the provision of employment
in the country. Moreover, the bulk of
the plantation crops are found in the Wet Zone of the country which is also the
region of acute rural unemployment and under employment in the island. In addition,
it is also considered to be strengthening the plantation sector not only to absorb
more labour but also as a means of agricultural diversification. The plantation
sector, therefore, was considered as vital to the growth of the economy of Sri
Lanka.
Land for plantation agriculture increased by a
cumulative annual average of around 22,272 acre per year between 1831-50 and
1921-1930. In 1950s, the land under plantation crops was around 928,000
hectares (Tea 229,333, Rubber 265,000 and Coconut 433,000). The growth of area,
production and exports of the plantation crops in the island from 1950s to 2002
is shown below.
Growth of Area (000 hectares)
1950/52 1960/62 1970/72 1980/82 1990/92 2000/02
Tea 229 237 241 241 221 167
Rubber 265 271 258 213 198 157
Coconut
433 444 466 42 380 439
Total 928 953 968 876 801 766
Production Trend (tea & rubber in Mn.Kg.
and Coconut in Mn.Nuts)
1950/52 1960/62 1970/72 1980/82 1990/92 2000/02
Tea 143 205 213 196 212 303
Rubber 106 100 147 127 102 87
Coconut
2225 2531 2694 2268 2337 3055
Export Earnings
1950/52 1960/62 1970/72 1980/82 1990/92 2000/02
Agri. 90.5 91.2 90.1 57.9 31.66 19.14*
Total 1,656 1,791 1,946 20,030 89,853 433,445**
Source: Compiled from the
Annual Reports, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, (Various years).
*Percentage of the
Total
**Total export
values in million rupees.
Note: Agricultural
exports including Tea, Rubber, Coconut- Kernel products & others and minor
agricultural products.
The figures show that the area under plantation
crops expanded up to 1970s and thereafter it had declined except for a marginal
expansion of area under coconut during the period in 2000/02. However, the data clearly shows that the production
of the plantation crops have steadily increased between 1950 and 1959
respectively.
It is also interesting to compare the
plantation sector with the global scenario after the 1950s as well. The following table given below show the production
of tea and rubber in selected countries.
Percentage
Share of the Global Production of Tea and Rubber
Country
|
TEA
|
|||
1952
|
1968-70
|
1986-88
|
1998-2000
|
|
India
Sri Lanka
Other Asia
Africa
South America
Other Country
|
45.6
24.7
23.7
3.7
0.2
2.1
|
36.7
24.2
23.0
11.3
3.2
1.6
|
28.4
9.14
25.9
10.8
4.0
8.3
|
30.35
9.38
34.33
12.03
-
-
|
RUBBER
|
||||
Malaysia
Indonesia
Thailand
Sri Lanka
|
34.8
43.0
5.3
5.5
|
40.9
26.3
9.2
5.3
|
33.5
23.2
18.1
3.2
|
28.78
26.00
-
4.2
|
According to the above table a higher percentage
share of production of tea has been maintained by India and Sri Lanka, over the
greater part of the 50s and 60s. As far
as rubber is concern, the attempts to increase production in the early years of
independence had not been successful.
The years of 1960s were not favourable for tea and rubber. It was mainly to some errors in the
projection of these crops. Incidentally,
the rubber market was in decline due to the encroachment of synthetics since
1940s. However, the market for synthetic
completely collapsed due to increases in the prices of synthetic rubber, which
occurred in the wake of price escalation of petroleum products in the 1970s. It
should be noted that with all these constraints the tea and rubber sectors
still continue to generate higher gross returns to the country.
Though plantation sector maintained its
position as the leading sector of the economy, the preoccupation of peasant
sector with promotion of welfare coupled with the gradual emergence of the industrial
sector, brought about perceptible warning of the importance of plantation
agriculture in the country. Similarly, within the plantation sector the trend
of ‘Ceylonisation’ of ownership and management virtually stagnate the area
under cultivation.
Plantation Sector in the Economy of Sri Lanka
1947-50
|
1958-60
|
1968-70
|
1978-80
|
1988-90
|
1998-00
|
|
GDP
Employed Workers
|
36.5
26.9
|
33.0
N.A/
|
26.8
23.2
|
12.3
19.7
|
9.9
(11.00)
|
3.6
(4.0)
|
Source: Cited in G. H. Pieris,
Development and Change in Sri Lanka, p. 223.
Note: Figures in the
parenthesises are estimated.
The successive governments after independence
had repeatedly announced plans for nationalisation of the foreign owned
enterprises in the country. The attitude of the government led to curtail the plantation
sector in terms of falling investment and demoralised management of the estate
sector etc. Consequently, many foreign
owned plantation, companies and individuals fragmented their tea lands into
small plots and sold them. The announcement of the nationalisation of foreign
owned assets led to decline of further expansion of the plantation agriculture-
particularly tea by the British owned companies like 'Sterling' and 'Rupees'
that possessed large scale tea estates in the country.
This particularly curtailed the tea sector in
terms of factory maintenance, transplanting activities, infilling vacancies of
tea bushes and social conservation in the plantation sector. The following data
shows the trend of replanting and fertilizer usage in tea and rubber plantation
sector in the country in selected years.
Replanting, Application of Fertilizer to the Plantation Crops in
Selected Years
Replanted (Hectares)
|
Fertilizer (000 mt)
|
|||
Tea
|
Rubber
|
Tea
|
Rubber
|
|
1961/63
1970/72
|
723
2686
|
7089
3670
|
150.7
94.3
|
62.86
36.5
|
Compiled from
Statistical Abstract of Sri Lanka (various years)
Nationalisation of
Plantation
The
structural change that took place in Sri Lanka's plantation sector referred to
as ‘nationalisation of estates’ commenced of the Land Reform Law No. 1 of 1972
and Land Reforms (Amendment) Law No. 29 of 1975. The land reform Law, No.1 of
1972 imposed ceilings (25 acres for paddy land and 50 acres for other
categories of land) on private ownership of land and provided for the setting
up of a Land reform Commission(LRC) vested with powers to acquire and
redistribute privately owned land in excess of the stipulated ceilings. Three
years later, the scope of the reform was extended through the Land-Reform
(Amendment) Law, No. 39 of 1975 under which land related capital assets held by
public companies engaged in agriculture were nationalised. A crop-wise
breakdown of the extents divested from private ownership during this three year
period is presented in the following table.
Extent of Land Acquired during the land reform
(in hectares)
Crops
|
Under 1972 Law
|
Between
1972 and 1975
|
Under 1975 law
|
Total
|
Tea
|
56,396
|
13,857
|
96,152
|
166,405
|
Rubber
|
33,413
|
2,702
|
38,379
|
74,494
|
Coconut
|
45,537
|
-
|
2,592
|
48,130
|
Others
|
92,663
|
5,389
|
32,021
|
130,073
|
Source: Cited in Source:
Cited in G. H. Pieris, ‘Structural Change in Plantation Agriculture in Sri
Lanka,’ in Goonaratne W and Wesumperuma D (ed.) Plantation Agriculture in Sri
Lanka, 1984, ILO, p. 36.
The LRC was empowered both to develop the land
under its own management as well as to alienate the land either in large blocks
to other public sector agencies and co-operative organisations or small
allotments to landless individuals for agricultural or residential use.
The Principal Recipients of land under the Land
Reform Programme
Public Sector Extent
(hectares)
State
Plantation Corporation 105,828
People’s estate development Board
94,739
Up-country Co-operative Estate
Development Board 29,583
Tea and rubber Research Institute 4,006
Co-operatives
Land
Reform Co-operative (Janawasa) 19,425
Electoral
Co-operatives 70,822
‘Special’ and Other Co-operatives 16,188
Peasant Smallhodings 35,815
In the immediate aftermath of land acquisition
under the reform programme, the public sector agencies were entrusted with the
task of management of the acquired land. The State Plantations Corporation
(SPC), Up-Country Estates Development Board (USAWASAMA) and the Jantha Estate
Development Board (JEDB) were set up and about 35 percent of the total area
under plantation agriculture were distributed to these institutes. However,
this situation did not remain static and subsequently the SPC and JEDB were the
gigantic organizations who dominated the sector until 1990s.
These agencies were under the general direction
and control of the executive branch of the government. As far as plantation
crop is concern the continual adherence of non-optimise field practices, lack
of supervision in field and factory management, wasteful expenditure on
bureaucratic administration and over re-recruitment at executive and managerial
level led to determination of the plantation sector in the country.
However, some institutional charge was taken
place towards the end of 1980s. A 'Core
Group' was appointed by the government in 1989 based on the advice of the World
Bank to identify the problems and process a programme for long term viability
of the plantation sector in the country.
1.
Leasing
or sale of coconut estates to the private sector.
2.
Leasing
of the rubber and tea estates to the private sector.
3.
Entering
into management contract with private sector firms for the management of groups
or clusters of estates.
As we noticed
above the plantation represented 36,5 per cent of GNP in the 1948-50 period. It
represented less than 13 per cent in the 1978-80 period and 11 per cent in
1983. During the same periods the share of plantation products in foreign
exchange earnings declined from 90.7 per cent in 1950 to 53 per cent in 1980
and to 47 per cent in 1983. Therefore the government embarked upon a number of
projects for rehabilitation. The
targets that were expected by the implementation of the rehabilitation
programmes did not sufficiently materialise and thus, the financial problem
reached a crisis point because of the proportions of heavy borrowing from the
two state banks.
Subsequently, the government dissolved most
of the co-operative agencies and handed over the tea estate management to the
private companies under the recommendation of the Plantation Restructuring
Committee (PRC), which was formulated with the assistance of the World Bank in
1984. Currently, the plantation companies (22) control around 53 per cent of
the total tea estate management and around 40 per cent belong to smallholders.
Only 7 per cent remain under the state corporations’ i.e the SPC and JEDB.
However, labour unrest and low level labour participation in the industry
emerged in the large-scale tea estates in the Higher and Mid elevation tea
regions.
The Plantation Workers
There is some lack of clarity associated with
the usage of occupational, demographic and ethnic terminology in the writings
on plantation workers in Sri Lanka.
Quite frequently, the distinctions between the "plantation
workforce", "estate population", "Indian Tamils" and
"stateless persons" tend to be regarded inconsequential in the Sri
Lankan exemplification of the 'plantation model'. This perception requires clarification.
In an occupational classification of the
economically active workforce in Sri Lanka, the term "plantation
worker" may be used to refer to a person whose main source of income is
employment as a wage earner in a large unit of production devoted to crops such
as tea, rubber and coconut.
Using such a definition, the Socio-Economic
Survey of 1985/86 has shown that the plantation workforce consists of about
430,000 persons. They and their
dependents probably number around 950,000.
The majority of plantation workers and their
dependents resides on estates, constituting about 95.2 per cent of the
"estate population". About 15
to 20 per cent of the plantation workforce does not belong to the estate
population. The estate population itself
is of mixed ethnicity, with Tamils constituting its majority. Census records are not precise on the Indian
Tamil/Sri Lankan Tamil distinction within the estate population. Some among those who would be conventionally
regarded as 'Indian Tamils' (on account of their "recent Indian
origin"), have obtained Sri Lankan citizenship - an estimated 360,000by January
1986 - and tend to be enumerated as "Sri Lankan Tamils", thus
inflating the size of the latter group in the estate population.
Thirty years ago, a 'typical' plantation worker
in Sri Lanka could have been described as "a stateless person belonging to
an ethnic minority which is largely confined to plantation sector
employment". The foregoing
information shows that the application of such a generalisation at present to a
study of the plantation workforce could entail considerable distortion of
reality.
Well over 90 per cent of the plantation workforce
in Sri Lanka is made up of those serving in the labourer grades who, on the
basis of their conditions of employment, could be placed in several
categories. There is, first, the
distinction between 'permanent' and 'casual' workers, with the former category
accounting for about 80 per cent of the labour force. The permanent workers derive most of their
earnings in the form of cash receipts from the employer which consists of (a) a
fixed daily wage, (b) a 'special living allowance' indexed for changes in the
cost of living), and (c) 'over-poundage' payments (a bonus paid per unit of
daily output of leaf plucked or latex tapped exceeding a specified
minimum). At various times in the past,
there have been other allowances such as a price-wage supplement', an
additional special allowance', and an interim devaluation allowance. The fixed daily wage and the special living
allowance are the main components of the total receipt.
Casual workers are also employed by the
plantation industries in fairly large numbers.
they are drawn either from the worker population residing on the estates
or from the villages outside. Usually,
this category of workers is employed more in work relating to keep and
maintenance (replanting, weeding, pruning, etc.) than for the routine tasks of
plucking or tapping. Employers exercise
some flexibility in regard to their remuneration by paying them 'task rates'
rather than daily wages.
Under the pattern of payments to workers
described above, the to main determinants of earnings of the large majority in
the plantation workforce are the wage-cum-living allowance, and the
'employment intensity'. Accordingly, in
plantation worker agitations for improvements in conditions of employment,
these two determinants have always tended to receive prime attention.
Plantations ("estates") as a human
settlement type differ from other types of rural settlements in Sri Lanka. The overwhelming majority of those who belong
to the labourer grades of plantation employment live in "line-rooms"
(usually, single room, barrack-type residential units), clusters of which are
found scattered around within each plantation.
Typically, such a cluster consists of a large number of residential
units that stand in rows ("lines") on a small patch of carefully
demarcated ground. Small vegetable
plots, an occasional cattle shed, open drains, and communal open-pit latrines
occupy the narrow spaces between and adjacent to the "lines",
providing the residential cluster the appearance of extreme congestion and
squalor, mitigated only by the fact that it is surrounded by vast stretches of
tea or rubber land.
The plantation workers of Sri Lanka have often
been identified as a segment of the country's population that suffers from
extreme poverty and want. This has been
attributed to two sets of interwoven causes - namely the exploitative
production relations inherent to the plantation system, and the political
oppression of an ethnic minority. To
generalise on the literature relating to these themes, while writings that deal
with global perspectives of underdevelopment and poverty tend to stress the
aspects of economic exploitation, those that are concerned more specifically
with ethnic conflict and minority rights in Sri Lanka usually highlight
oppression and discrimination.
The basis of these themes from a historical
viewpoint is so well known that it requires only brief recapitulation. Even since the origins of plantation enterprise
in Sri Lanka during the 19th century, living standards among
plantation workers - most of whom were immigrants from South India - have been
featured by earnings that were barely adequate for survival, and gross
deficiencies in the satisfaction of basic needs in food, shelter, education,
health care and sanitation. Their wages
were constantly kept at low levels primarily for maximising the surplus
extracted form their labour either for transfer ** profits to owners of
plantations or for diversion into other sectors of the economy for investment
and consumption. Moreover, the daily
lives of plantation workers have been subject to greater regimentation and
authoritarian control than those of many other categories of workers. They have also had little scope for
occupational mobility. This, along with
the precarious balance persisting between their earnings, on the one hand, and
survival needs, on the other, inhibited collective effort on their part towards
the improvement of their living conditions. And, the majority among them remained excluded
from participation in the political processes of the country, having been
divested of their citizenship rights soon after country gained independence.
Several changes witnessed during the past two
decades have, in various ways, contributed towards increasing the bargaining
strength of the plantation workforce, and hence, to certain distinct
improvements in their conditions of employment.
The foremost among such changes in terms of relative impact is the admission
to Sri Lankan citizenship of an increasing number of Indian Tamils living on
the plantations. This has enabled them
to emerge as a political force in the country.
At the presidential, parliamentary, and provincial councils elections
held since the late 1970s, for example, it was evident that the "Indian
Tamil" segment of the plantation workforce, acting as a cohesive group,
could have a perceptible impact on the outcome of the elections. Thus, the general trend during the recent
past has been one of increasing responsiveness of the government to the needs
and demands of the plantation workforce.
The changes that accompanied the land reforms
in the plantation sector have also, in the long term, been beneficial to the
plantation workforce. At the initial
stages of the reform programme, mainly on account of the related organisational
dislocations.
The central position of the plantation is the
main foreign exchange earner and a key provider of employment make it
imperative that the plantation industry needs to be revitalised and made viable
once again. The problems that the
industry confronts are clear, and most of them are not of recent origin. Nearly two decades of state ownership and
management of the larger plantations has apparently contributed to compound the
problems the lack of dynamism and even deterioration of the industry under
public ownership provided.
References
1.
Amerasinghe,
Y. R. (1993) Recent Trends in Employment and Productivity in the Plantation
Sector of Sri Lanka with Special Reference to the Tea Sector, ARTEP, New Delhi.
2.
Goonaratne,
W. and D. Wesumpermu, (1984) Plantation Agriculture in Sri Lanka, ILO/ARTEP.
3.
Peiris,
G. H. (1996) Development and Change in Sri Lanka, Geographical Perspectives,
Macmillan India Ltd.
Thanks
Thanks
- S.
Chandrabose
