The price of a cup of tea: Exploitation, inequality and fight for

Sixty-three-year-old Natesan Jayaraman, in his 44 years of working in a tea plantation, has learnt that avoiding unnecessary conversations is a useful strategy that kept him away from trouble with his kanganis (supervisors) and dorais (a colonial term still used by many to refer to estate managers).

- PON VASANTH BA

It is therefore after a lot of hesitation that he started talking when TNIE met him on the way from Hatton to Nuwara Eliya in the Central Province of Sri Lanka. Jayaraman began working at 18, earning a meagre LKR 5 a day. Now, despite decades of toil, his wage is LKR 1,000, a penalty for surpassing the retirement age of 60. To earn even this, he must pluck 24 kilos of tea leaves daily. He, his wife (also a plantation worker), and their two children still reside in a 'layam'-cramped line houses built during British rule. His children, denied opportunities for education, remain unemployed.