Question

Look into the history of either tea or coffee plantations in India. See how the life of workers in these plantations was similar to or different from that of workers in indigo plantations.

Answer 1

Hint:
We need to study the agricultural pattern of tea or coffee plantations in Indian history and compare the life of workers in these plantations with that of workers in indigo plantations.

Complete answer:
The workers in the tea plantations were oppressed. They were given low wages. Their housing was poor and they lacked social mobility. To make more profits, the tea planters would reclaim the wastelands in which the workers had to increase their labour to develop the plantation. For this, the planters introduced the indentured labour system. The local as well as outside labourers were employed under contract. The indentured labour system was of two types – Arkatti and Sardari.

Under Arkatti system, unlicensed recruitment was being carried out from tribal areas of the sub-continent, like Chotanagpur.
Under the Sardari system, the already employed workers employed new labours in the plantation gardens. The labourers had to work hard. The outside labourers had to stay in the garden for a longer period. They were exploited in many ways. They were not given permission to meet their family, even on occasions. Neither were they allowed to leave the plantation garden during the contract period.

The labourers working in the tea plantations and those in the farming of indigo were similar in the way that they were exploited by their employers. The profit was made by the owners and the labourers got almost nothing. They were dissimilar in the way that, though there was a contract with the planters, the indigo workers were not bound in an indentured labour system. The only difference between the two workers was is that tea plantation workers were under a planter contract, that allowed the indentured servitude to exist

Note:
The early accounts of Indian history do not provide information regarding the use of tea or its cultivation, but it was mention by a Dutch sea-traveller in 1598 that tea is being eaten as well as drunk in India.

The tea plants were first discovered the year 1824, in the hills of Assam. The British introduced the culture of tea consumption to India in 1836. India had been a huge producer of tea for almost a hundred years.

There were two main systems for the cultivation of indigo i.e. ‘nij’ and ‘ryoti’. Under nij cultivation, planters could not expand their area because indigo can only be cultivated on fertile and these lands were already populated.