Vignettes of the Public Service: The Plantation Industry

"Even the Land Reform Act gave them time to make a getaway: the ‘rupee companies’ were taken first, the ‘sterling companies’ had a two year grace period. ‘Land reform’, in any case failed to address the problems of the Kandyan villagers whose individual holdings and common property the plantations had squatted on. Today, some 60 years after Independence and a like period after the Kandyan Peasantry Commission (the plantation companies ignored even its sittings) they continue to do so." _________________________________

by Gamini Seneviratne

(May 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The plantation industry as a whole functioned as though it was a state within the state. That applied to the management of the estates and factories as well as to all the ancillaries that sustained them. These included the import of fertilizer, packing material, the running schedules of goods trains, banking facilities, insurance, shipping, brokering or setting prices, and the use of the cess fund. They also determined when the proceeds of exports may be sent back here.

The plantation companies believed they could continue so after 1948 and, with the help of ‘government’ and of individual officials, did so for the next two decades. Nevertheless, some form of panic occurred after the hartal, and ‘disinvestment’ commenced around 1954. It took the form of cutting down on expenses such as fertiliser and the maintenance of factory equipment; ‘abandoning’ fields that did not yield as much leaf as before.

Even the Land Reform Act gave them time to make a getaway: the ‘rupee companies’ were taken first, the ‘sterling companies’ had a two year grace period. ‘Land reform’, in any case failed to address the problems of the Kandyan villagers whose individual holdings and common property the plantations had squatted on. Today, some 60 years after Independence and a like period after the Kandyan Peasantry Commission (the plantation companies ignored even its sittings) they continue to do so.

The role of party politics in this as in other matters, particularly over the past three decades, has been about the only ‘transparent’ element in the administration of the country. Even before land reform laws were enacted, an M.P. wanted an estate acquired in order to turn it into a dairy farm. It was from that area, he said, that milk had been supplied to the Royal household. Colvin told me to go have a look. Though I got to the appointed place at the appointed time, quite early in the morning (this was when a run, say, to Kandy in an old car took two hours), the M.P. did not turn up. I went on to the estate where I came upon three hamlets within it; the villagers knew nothing of their M.P.’s initiative. Riff-raff from the "bajar" had been promised land there; they weren’t getting any either. When the M.P. caught up with me, he explained that dairy-farming cannot be done on a large scale, it requires intensive management. I agreed. All he wanted was the patch of some twenty acres planted in VP tea (proof, he said, of that bit of land being good for pasture and cattle) and the bungalow around which the VP field lay. Colvin gave him what, in planters’ language would be a ‘roasting’.

Nevertheless, that government did not seek to change the system of land use/abuse on the estates. Not even the Royal Commission on Agency Houses & Brokering Firms (there was much debate at the time on whether ‘broking’ or ‘brokering’ was the correct term) attempted to chart another scenario for the central highlands. As I have mentioned before, implicit in the notion of ‘taking over the commanding heights of the economy’ was the assumption that the plantations constituted them. As was inevitable it followed that the supposed ‘take-over’ resulted in little more than a change of managers.

Following the botched ‘land reform’ which, beside the other lacks referred to, for the most part damaged rather than reconstructed, with the Jayewardene administration things went back to where they had been in terms of autonomy; mismanagement, on a more rapacious scale became ‘the order’ of the day. Among the first acts of the new ‘Management Companies’ was to sell off the fuel-wood groves. Before long they were acting as though they owned the land itself (rather like the ‘Emirates’) and, among other activities unrelated to planting, got down to gemming. I see in the papers that a Committee has been appointed to scrutinise the record of those companies.

We have recently had in these columns a faithful account by a senior planter of what was demanded of ‘him’, i.e., a periya dorai: management of ‘labour’, putting them to the most productive use, (weeding, plucking, applying fertilizer, pruning); getting them their rice, dhal, bread etc.; ensuring economy in field operations as well as in the factory, keeping an eye firmly on the bottom line.

The world outside existed mostly in the petti-kaddies and the taverns which too were part of the system. It is no matter for surprise that among the matters he misses is whether the people in the villages his plantations were squatting on had rice, bread, dhal; what access those children had to any kind of schooling; whether there was any possibility of his precious fertilizer leaking into their non-existent vegetable plots. Whether there was space for toilets in those hamlets that had been forced into ravines that the ‘plantations’ had created and/or had no use for; whether the effluent from his factory poisoned what fields they yet had.

The ‘clean weeding’ that H W Cave referred to, coupled with the direction in which the drains were laid - (they ran up and down the slope on gradients that were not known to household gardeners in ‘the Home Country’), accelerated the run-off of top soil on land that had been denuded of forest cover. The result was the siltation of the rivers, paddy fields and reservoirs. When the Accelerated Mahaweli Project was charging down from Kotmale to Maduru Oya, it was estimated, around 1981, that Kotmale would be silted up to its dead storage level within 14 years. As far as I know it did not take that long. I do not know whether it is yet to be done or how continuously, but the need to clean up that ‘holding reservoir’ occurred before the asweddumisation of the lands it was eventually to feed was completed.

The planters were also trained in ‘tea tasting’, though it was the taste-buds and the pocket calculators of the broker’s people that made the decisions about blending and about price. On the whole, despite the interventions that ‘the government’, read ‘the industry’, made from time to time, they made a good job of it for the ‘shareholders’: it was a time when the new shibboleth of ‘stake-holders’ was yet to be invented.

The work of the Superintendents was supervised by Visiting Agents (VAs), - senior planters, some of whom functioned from Agency Houses and Brokering firms. Those who manned ‘desks’ in agency houses tended to be more experienced in the planting aspects of management, those in brokering firms with factory operations. It was, overwhelmingly, a case of ‘knowledge reproduction’, in-house and comfy; but not entirely so.

The Tea Research Institute, manned by pure scientists (botany, zoology, chemistry) rather than agronomists (trained to cover the range and make necessary connections in a more general way – many of them ill-equipped for ‘research’)), had become a kind of two-faced organisation. The TRI Board was dominated by planters who brought up field problems for investigation and demanded solutions that did not disturb the bottom line (except in a positive direction). The scientists tended to focus more on refining their explorations in the field of ‘pure research’, with, perhaps, learned articles in prestigious journals in view. The TRI, relative to the RRI and the CRI, attracted scientists who had the best academic credentials; they were also paid more. Though it was headquartered in Talawakelle, it had sub-stations in Kandy and Ratnapura and was well positioned to investigate field problems in various parts of the ‘tea districts’ at various ‘elevations’.

I believe that, on the whole, the scientists provided good advice (with the occasional bloomer). One such that caused much heart-burn was a directive given, as ‘a scientific finding’, (which evidently it was not), by Director, Dr Chenery, to fell the shade-trees. (He was heading for Kenya which was being ‘developed’ to take on ‘Ceylon Tea’ in the world market). The planters were confused, as were their VAs.

I quote one example: Tony Witham was showing me around his piggery when I mentioned shade trees. (That pig-pen was probably among the first to adopt the ‘cafeteria’ system: a huge sow, pretending to be a Sumo wrestler, lay in the first ‘cubicle’. Her brood were moved on from stall to stall, fattened on the way, the numbers in each diminishing or the stalls providing more elbow or trotter room, till they reached the anthima-last-final one and were ready for the butcher).

‘Aislaby’, Witham’s charge, occupied a place of distinction even among "the Uva’s" , (Uva Highlands and St. James’ come to mind, Dyraaba may have been a bit too low), which, located above the road towards Ettampitiya, off the Bandarawela - Welimada road, received the hot, dry winds off that valley and, during its ‘season’, gave their tea a particular flavour. The remark I made to Witham suggested that, maybe, the leaf on the bush needed shade too to make the best of those dry winds. I was told that, not long after, he had rushed to St. Coomb’s and demanded assurances on the matter.

I had long had the impression that the tea plantations barred science from passing through their fences. After all, the VAs were there to put them right, tell them what to do. Among the striking results of ‘pure science’ was the recommendation made by Dr. Upatissa Pethiyagoda, that in fields marked for rehabilitation, the tea uprooted, vetiver (saevendara) be planted in place of Guatamala grass - which was of no use to even cattle, much less the soil. Besides discouraging a particularly invasive eel-worm, it possessed other economic benefits as well – an oil that commanded a market. I recall Dr. Pethiyagoda explaining all that to Dr. Colvin R de Silva in the early ‘seventies. His project, however, was shot down, not by the planters but by fellow-‘scientists’. Envy is all pervasive. When the World Bank took up the matter some decades later, surprise! the TRI bureaucracy began to trumpet the merits of vetiver.

However, as it turned out, ‘science’ was not altogether suspect among some senior planters who were able to act according to their instincts. In 1971, Dr. Badiuddin Mahmud, Minister of Education, entrusted the task of revising the B.Sc (Agriculture) course at Peradeniya, the only University that had one, to a committee that consisted of Dr. Don Senanayake from the University, Ranjan Wijeratne who represented the interests of the plantations with myself as its chairman. We recommended that the major plantation crops be included in the syllabus, and even identified the estates where the field work should be done: Hantane, where the TRI station was located, (for tea), Giragama (for coconut and rubber), both not too far from Peradeniya. There were hiccups about those locations but what matters is that the University followed up our recommendations. The first batch that was so introduced to plantation agriculture passed out in 1975. Ranjan Wijeratne told me some years later that "They may not have known the use of a knife & fork but they knew their agriculture. They were more quickly on the job than the old-style creepers." He was, all along, one who could think ‘outside the box’.

It must be said, however, that the senior officials in the ministries and departments that were required to service the industry and to monitor its activities let the scientists as well as their own staff down, sort of dis-performed their mandate.

In the area of tea manufacture, TRI scientists achieved great distinction, and it would not be unfair to say that they tended to be let down by administrators (Civil Servants). A process for the manufacture of Instant Tea by a team of scientists headed by Dr. R L Wickremasinghe was ‘sold’, or, in more realistic terms, given away, to Whittalls, an agency house which sold it to Unilever. It was the first and only, (at the time and probably still), instant tea that retained the flavour of tea: the TRI team had identified the flavour-giving compounds in tea, (a mere fraction of the compounds in it), those among them through which caramelisation occurred, - and developed a process by which that nuisance could be eliminated.

That was in the early 1960s. ‘CeyTea’ (I forget how that brand-name’s spelt), established itself in Lindula. When Unilever, big, Big investor, wished to modernise their factory, they applied for a subsidy cum loan under an ADB project to make that Investment. As a member of the committee that oversaw the project I was deputed to have a look at what they wanted. I knew little about the manufacture of tea and nothing about how instant tea was made, what machinery it required. I asked the Director of the TRI, Dr. Fernando, Dr. R L Wickremasinghe and Dr. Dhayan Kirthisinghe for guidance. As I learnt on that occasion, it was their first visit to the CeyTea factory. The TRI, which developed the process had been barred from the site of its commercial exploitation.

An attempt at a similar appropriation of the work of TRI scientists occurred with the fluid-bed tea drier. Dhayan Kirthisinge, a chemical engineer, lacking the necessary facilities at St. Coomb’s, had worked with the Colombo Commercial Company in fabricating that equipment. The CCC, headed by a man referred to as ‘Dusty’ Miller, made a grab for it, sought a patent on it. Unfortunately for him, such applications were referred to Dr. Kirthisinghe. The rest is ‘history’.

As far as I recall, ‘trough withering’ too was developed by the TRI. It’s been taken up in all tea-producing countries.

The ‘tea-sherry’ and ‘carbonated tea’ developed by Dr. R. L. de Silva were never developed for commercial use. A few years later, when Pin Fernando’s ‘Pure Beverages’ came up with a process for producing a tea liquor (the base of ‘Coca Cola’) from refuse tea, it was effectively shot down by the Tea Controller. Refuse tea was being ‘de-natured’ with lime to prevent it being sifted for use in the pot (at one time an extensive cottage industry around Gampola and Kadugannava), and lay in large mounds near the factories. Pure Beverages offered to buy the refuse right off the factory at -/10 cts a pound. The Tea Controller prescribed a price of -/25 cts.

The plantations had been free of scrutiny by any government agency. The span of control of the Tea Control/Rubber Control departments stopped at the gate of the "thottam." The VAs did their job for them, inspected and approved subsidy payments for replanting, new planting etc. Their own Inspectors had no access to the plantations; and the heads of those departments, through the 1940s to the 1970s, were hunky-dory with that system. When I called at Park estate or Pedro to have a look at their progress in some kind of animal husbandry, the Estate Employers’ Federation raised a howl.

In 1970, when the late, lamented, Haris Hulugalle, told me that Wikiliya Estate was for sale for Rs. 50,000/- plus ‘labour commitments’ (unpaid provident fund obligations), I went there with Gamini Iriyagolla and Tilak Wettasinghe (later a Director of the TRI). We found that, on the recommendation of VAs, ‘replanting’ subsidies had been paid for some thirty acres that, by their map, included the office buildings. There was not a leaf of VP tea on that estate.

A study on the impact of taxation and subsidies on the plantation industries (on which Hugh Molegoda made a substantial contribution) showed that in the 1950s and 1960s, the profits declared were but a shade over the amounts drawn as subsidies.

As the tea plantation industry declined further efforts were made to diversify land under tea into other crops, - that’s another story.
- Sri Lanka Guardian