History · Society · 10 min read

The People Who Made Munnar: A History of the Tea Workers

The tea gardens of Munnar were cleared, planted and tended by workers brought from the Tamil country, generation after generation. The kangani system that recruited them, the labour lines where they lived, the laws that changed their lives, and the questions of land and identity they still face.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

Every tea bush in Munnar was planted, pruned and plucked by hand. Behind the green hills is a human story that visitors rarely hear: the story of the tens of thousands of workers, most of them from the Tamil country, who cleared the forests, built the estates and have tended them for more than a century.

Clearing the hills

When the planters began clearing the High Range for coffee and tea in the 1870s and 1880s, they needed thousands of workers. Few people lived in the high hills, and the tribal communities of the area, such as the Muthuvan, did not take up estate work. (Read about the tribal communities of Munnar.) So the planters looked east, to the crowded, drought-prone districts of the Tamil plains, where landless agricultural labourers, many of them Dalits, faced poverty and debt. (Read about the early planters.)

The kangani system

Workers were recruited through the kangani system. The word comes from the Tamil kankani, an overseer. A kangani was usually a worker himself, who recruited a gang of labourers from his own village, kin and caste. The planter gave him an advance of money to pay for recruitment and travel, and the kangani earned a commission on his gang's earnings. In Travancore, most kangani-recruited labour came from Madurai and Tirunelveli.

The system bound workers through debt. Advances for travel, food and old debts were deducted from wages, and many workers found that on payday they still owed money, a "black receipt". Working days were long, conditions in the early estates were harsh, and diseases such as malaria and cholera killed many. Workers walked up from the plains on steep hill paths, carrying their belongings, to reach the estates.

The labour lines

On the estates, workers lived in lines: long, low rows of small rooms, each housing a family, built by the company near the tea fields and the factory. Over time, the lines became villages, with their own temples, churches, shops, schools and festivals, and a distinctive culture in which Tamil traditions blended with those of Kerala. Many lines still stand, and many families still live in them.

Laws and change

After Indian independence, the Plantation Labour Act of 1951 required employers to provide housing, medical care, drinking water, sanitation, schools and crèches for workers' children, and set limits on working hours. The kangani system declined and was abolished in the 1950s and 1960s. Trade unions became powerful on the estates. Wages and conditions improved, though they remained well below those of many other workers in Kerala.

In 2005, Tata Tea transferred most of its Munnar estates to the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Company, in which the workers became shareholders. In 2015, women workers led a famous strike for better wages and bonus. (Read about Pembilai Orumai.)

Land, housing and identity

About four generations after their ancestors came to the hills, many tea workers still face basic questions of belonging. Their homes in the lines belong to the company, and when they retire, they must leave. Most have no land of their own, and retirement benefits are modest. Government schemes to provide housing for plantation workers have been slow to take effect.

Many Tamil-speaking families also face difficulties with official documents, such as caste certificates, which require proof that their ancestors settled in Kerala before 1950. The number of Tamil plantation workers in the Munnar area has fallen over the decades, as younger people move away for education and work.

Remembering the workers

When you look at the tea gardens of Munnar, you are looking at the work of many generations of men and women whose names are rarely recorded. Their story, too, is part of the history of the hills. (Read also our guide to Munnar tea and our introduction to Munnar.)