Tea stains on the conscience

Pubudu Jayagoda, Education Secretary of the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), recommended on Facebook that parliamentarians be paid at the rate of Rs 700 per day and be denied ‘wages’ on days they do not attend Parliament. Whether parliamentarians should be paid an allowance is of course a moot point and it is certainly ridiculous to give them pensions, but Jayagoda’s suggestion puts certain things in perspective.

The reference is of course to the paltry daily wages offered to those who work as laborers in tea estates. The demand, as is now almost common knowledge, is that the daily wage be upped to Rs 1000 from Rs 700. It is reported that the subject minister, companies and unions had agreed to a Rs 100 increase. The agreement however has been rejected by certain sections of the workers, for what is given by the right hand has been taken away by the left, metaphorically speaking. 

The battle then, is not yet over. This is why Jayagoda’s suggestion is important. 

The official minimum monthly wage is Rs 10,000. Those who earn less than Rs 15,000 a month are considered poor as per the poverty line determined by those who are said to know such things; i.e. the cost of living, real incomes etc. Thus, assuming a 20 day work month, those who earn less than Rs 750 a day are poor while those on the minimum wage earn approximately Rs 500 a day. This means that plantation labor is among those at the bottom of the pile, although their detractors might say ‘they are better off than others’. Some may invoke the dispossession of the Kandyan Peasantry and the draconian Waste Lands Act. ‘There’s injustice everywhere, what’s so special about these folks?’ some might query.  

Well, the short answer to that kind of logic is this: unless you are not taking up all the causes out there, you do not have the moral authority to question pick-and-choose. People do what they can, when they can or rather when there’s nothing else they can do. And, to be fair, those who have taken up the cause of estate workers have been consistent in the struggle for justice on the matter of exploitation.

But let’s play with Jayagoda’s suggestion. We could design a role-play for purposes of producing some empathy. Something on the following lines:

How about spending an entire work day (i.e. the average hours that a regular worker spends) picking tea leaves? No shoes. No long lunch or tea breaks, and strictly adhering to rules regarding expected volumes. There will definitely be leeches and perhaps reptiles too. You may have to hear abuse from whoever is supervising your work. One thing more about tea breaks — you are not going to get export quality tea and nothing like what’s served in the upmarket coffee shops in Colombo, you’ll just get dust-tea, just as the laborers do. 

You’ll get Rs 1,400 for your efforts. Yes, double the amount paid to tea pluckers. Wait, let’s raise it. How about Rs 2,800 a day? That’s four times what they get. 

Let’s have the minister, the deputy minister, all CEOs of plantation companies and while we are at it, shareholders as well all categories of employees above the ‘rank’ of a tea-plucker, doing what the tea-pluckers do day in and day out, around the year. Any takers?

That kind of scenario can be scripted for all kinds of situations. You can use your imagination. 

We are talking tea though. Years ago, the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda who spent some time in Sri Lanka as a diplomat, was inspired to write by a tea box.  Here are some of the lines:

Exquisite tin box,

oh how you remind me 

of the swell of other seas,

the roar of monsoons over Asia

when countries rock like ships

at the hands of the wind

and Ceylon scatters its scents

like a head of storm-tossed hair.

Box of tea,

like my own heart

you arrived bearing stories, thrills 

eyes that held fabulous petals in their gaze

and also yes,

that lost scent of tea, jasmine and reams,

that scent of wandering spring.

Neruda may not have been acquainted with full the history of the island. He may not have had a good enough grasp of the political economy of tea. If he did he may have recognized in that quaint tin box the drudgery and sweat extracted and transformed into profit. 

කුරුඳුවත්තේ බංගලාවේ සඳලුතලේ හැන්දෑවක 

මෝට්සාට්ගේ වාදනයක් පියානොවකින් වයනා 

පුසුඹ ගහන ලමිස්සියේ...

බමවා ඔය රතැඟිලි තුඩු 

හීන්සැරෙන් ඔබ වයන්නේ 

තාත්තගේ තේ වත්තේ 

දල්ලට යටවූ දහඩිය 

සාඩම්බර බංගලාව දෝලාවල් බැංකු කාසි 

දල්ලට යටවූ දහඩිය 

Essentially, ‘Fragrant young girl who plays a piece of music by Mozart one evening in a balcony at a bungalow in Cinnamon Gardena…what you produce with those elegant fingers is the sweat hidden under the leaves in your father’s tea estate…..the proud mansion, palanquins (metaphor, obviously for grand vehicles), money and banks, nothing but the sweat hidden under the leaves….’

That’s Karl Marx’s Labour Theory of Value right there. 

Where do the workers go when the unions negotiate the terms of exploitation with bosses whose business is exploitation and politicians who are either bosses in their own right or represent them? 

There are songs we will never get to hear. There are beads of sweat that congeal into gold but which those who sweat never get to see. The true meaning of minimum wage is that which is given to ensure that the particular employee’s social self is reproduced, enabling continued expending of labour (for the continued exploitation of the same). Throw in subsidized education and health and even then this social reproduction is not obtained. There’s declining ‘self,’ that’s what we are seeing. It is not sustainable. It must erupt.  The powers in the power equation know it well but it would hit home hard and fast if they took Jayagoda’s cue. 

Meanwhile, have a cup of tea, ladies and gentlemen. How does it taste, I wonder.

malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com