Ghumāuri
Interstitial Sustainability in India’s Fair Trade–Organic Certified Tea Plantations
In Darjeeling’s Fair Trade and organic-certified tea plantations the path to gender justice is riddled with ironies. In chapter 3, I described the terminological confusions sustained by Fair Trade’s transnational bureaucracy for building more legitimacy and consumer confidence. In this chapter I uphold two contradictory processes at work inside these “certified” plantations. On one hand women plantation workers’ “survival narratives” and leadership skills are receiving increasing visibility in Fair Trade publicity material. On the other hand, women have categorically eschewed existing collective bargaining institutions (i.e., labor unions, despite card-holding union members) and new privatized collectives instituted by the Fair Trade certification standards (i.e., Joint Bodies or worker-management partnerships) to promote their interests. Women workers instead engage in much more clandestine forms of collective organizing, namely, revolving credit groups called ghumāuri. The prevalence of ghumāuri in rural areas in Nepal and Darjeeling is evident from my life history interviews with women plantation workers who claim to have inherited this group practice from their foremothers who migrated from rural Nepal. There is evidence of such practices among women in rural Nepal as demonstrated in Katherine March’s work on women’s economic activities in rural Nepal (see March and Taqqu 1986). While women’s informal activism and resource pooling is common in many other parts of the world, they are rarely discussed or supported by formal development interventions (Subramaniam and Purkayastha 2004). Their success and sustainability can perhaps be attributed to durable invisible paths through which they sustain livelihoods, social relations, and in my case postcolonial Fair Trade−certified plantations.
At present, ghumāuri help workers cope with their abysmally low wages through group savings and small entrepreneurial ventures, like pooling in cheap ration rice to make raksi (local beer) and selling eggs and vegetables through family networks. But, more importantly, it provides critical mentoring for women, young and old, on labor dynamics, Fair Trade, and daily survival that they cannot access in the male-dominated public sphere, although they actively participate in regional political movements. Women workers try their best to conceal their ghumāuri-related activities from plantation authorities, union organizers, Fair Trade certifiers, and male family members through practicing measured invisibility. In this chapter I elucidate why such measured invisibility is necessary in Fair Trade–certified plantations producing sustainable tea and flaunting the success of women leaders.
More ironical is the fact that the new Fair Trade projects in plantations involve starting Self Help Groups (SHGs) mimicking the famous micro-credit programs in various countries in South Asia. The loans from these projects, which come from Fair Trade promoting NGOs and plantation management, are available through nepotistic channels to certain women and their families. Everyday sustainability for average women workers is rooted in the past and present entrepreneurialism through ghumāuri.
Survival Narratives
While women do much of the work on small farms and plantations, they often still face unequal treatment, discrimination, and harassment in many rural areas and in factories which have reputations for abuses. Fair Trade strives to help women realize their full potential and to get the respect in their communities that they deserve. Women hired on Fair Trade farms and plantations are guaranteed access to health care, certain job rights, and freedom from harassment so that women are able to play a strong role in their families and in their coops. Fair Trade certified farms have empowered women through opportunities for education, leadership roles, and scholarships so that girls can imagine a future where they can be their own boss.
(From Fair Trade USA website under the entry
“What is Fair Trade Impact: Empowering Women”)
Our union leaders tell us that for the Nepali community “Gorkhaland” is the biggest issue. Yes, we have learnt the significance of demanding our land, but the miseries of the poor people have not reduced. Our ghumāuri group is like a small union where we women can openly discuss issues about our livelihood and work. We can give each other confidence.
—Chhāyā (Plantation worker and supervisor)
The Joint Body is like a “raja ko durbar” [king’s court]. Any sensible person needing the favors of the king knows that the Joint Body is not a place for honest discussions, it is all about making the king and his chamchas [coterie] feel good.
—Sulekha (Plantation worker)
This section emphasizes the contrast in survival narratives of women plantation workers as expressed to me—their interlocutor—and the celebration of women’s leadership and guaranteed success in Fair Trade propaganda. The plantation owners mimicked this idea of women becoming bosses in plantations and the few that had women in supervisory positions flaunted it for the greater dividends in the transnational morality market.
Note that that comment about ghumāuri being like a small union is made by Chhāyā, who has been active in local politics and labor unions, and has worked as a Kāmdhāri (group supervisor) for many years. But even someone like her, with moderately more power and respect compared to other women workers in plantations, remains deeply skeptical about the Gorkhaland movement, local politics and its potential for improving anything significant for women on thikā (daily wage). The social wage in Darjeeling is very low and even with recent improvement still stands at less than two dollars per day. The awful food supplements that they get with their weekly ration are not nourishing enough for maintaining their families. That’s when ghumāuri comes in handy. Therefore, Sulekha and many like her find the activities of the Joint Body useless since it has no connection with existing labor struggles and regional political mobilizations, let alone any real value for women.
Chhāyā and Sulekha’s views also reflect women plantation workers’ skepticism about individualized strategies of improving women workers’ livelihoods promoted by Fair Trade. They seem ineffective in the face of women’s everyday practices of self-care and its extension to community-care that are based on informal collectives that have provided a continual space of trust and mentoring in the harsh climate of gendered plantation disciplining.
Therefore, why women cherish there interstitial spaces (Springer 2005; Sexsmith 2012) within plantation communities can only be understood if we understand the gendered effects of regional politics with its specific ramifications for women’s rights and desires within tea plantations. Their agency lies in concealing these interstitial spaces of politics from becoming another story told to visitors, which will end up in some Fair Trade documentary and/or photograph. In this way they resisted Fair Trade’s appropriation of progressive politics and providing plantation women subject positions that valorize them without giving them any real power or access to resources in their everyday work and community lives for creating a more respectful existence. Rebuke, sarcasm, and ghumāuri khelnu (playing ghumāuri) are the only survival options and anchor their gendered projects of value.
Therefore, in the rest of this chapter I uphold aspects of regional labor politics which are relevant for understanding how ghumāuri groups operate and why they continue to be necessary in Fair Trade−certified plantations.
Gendered Transitions in Regional Labor Politics
In Darjeeling’s plantation communities, there has been a shift in trade union politics from Marxist ideas of workplace justice to a union politics intended for building consensus about the desirability of a separate Nepali state within India. This shift radically changed the justice-seeking practices and desires of women tea workers in the plantations, which is overlooked by global ethical regimes, such as Fair Trade. Fair Trade, which aims to empower women workers within Darjeeling’s plantations, fetishizes local institutions, such as the labor unions, as vehicles for women’s empowerment. Fair Trade directives, however, turn a blind eye to the fact that male, ethnic subnational politics silences the voices of female workers in male-dominated labor union politics. This chapter argues that understanding the gendered shifts within local labor unions is important in order to locate women’s complex desires and political agency in Darjeeling. This chapter shows that the latter is manifested through the formation of informal savings groups (ghumāuri) run by women plantation workers. It provides a space for women to discuss their daily economic and social problems away from the attention of plantation owners and Fair Trade certifiers.
Scholars studying transnational protest movements have often pointed out the limited scope of these movements: the ambivalence within these movements about “local struggles” for justice (Brooks 2006). Such instances of boundedness are more pronounced in plantations that retain old colonial structures of labor domination. This chapter analyzes why such ambivalence can persist (Collins 2002) and its effects on particular sites within a Fair Trade production chain.
Feminists and labor historians of South Asia have tried to theorize and understand the marginalization of women workers within formal labor union politics. Feminist scholars have documented the myriad ways in which women’s voices are silenced in union protests (Fernandes 1997) due to “multiple patriarchies” (Chatterjee 2001, 275). Kabeer argues that liberalization has further undermined the possibility of women’s mobilization in the postcolonial era, which remains “sporadic, limited and uneven” (Kabeer 2004, 186), and concluded that the process of commodity production is debilitating for women’s political futures (Collins 2002; Sen 2002; but see Mills 2002; Ramamurthy 2003 as exceptions). Piya Chatterjee writes that investigations of women’s public political participation within plantation production systems have to explore the “informal,” i.e., “small protests, usually excised from discussions of what are deemed ‘political’ activities” (1995, 265). This chapter demonstrates why such small protests become necessary. Such marginalization of women’s voices when occurring within the space of a Fair Trade−certified plantation should become an object of greater scrutiny, especially since Fair Trade aims to strengthen women’s power within unions and other collective bargaining institutions.
As the focus of oppositional politics within plantation communities in Darjeeling shifted over time, so did the scope and nature of women’s organizing and activism within the plantation community. Within the plantation community, the shift in trade union politics based on communist notions of workplace justice to union politics based on giving shape to a more concrete Nepali identity in India, through the creation of a Nepali homeland, has affected women’s perception about the effectiveness of unions in their lives. The plantation wages are insufficient (approximately $1.23 a day in 2006−7 and now stands at little over $2), and there is a crisis in drinking water and health care measures (Fareedi and Lepcha 2003).
Yet the focus of the union priorities was invested elsewhere. Women had turned their attention away from unions to ghumāuri groups, which they found more meaningful in the backdrop of a more male-dominated union. It helped them develop a collective shield of protection against the envy and rebuke they faced in their communities. Ghumāuri was an informal savings group run by women plantation workers. It provided a space for women to discuss their daily economic and social problems. In this chapter I establish why such activities were necessary in spite of a Joint Body and FLO funds.
Women’s participation and evaluation of Fair Trade policies was influenced by their engagement with the changing landscape of labor politics in Darjeeling. In such a scenario women felt that Fair Trade had little effectiveness because it bypassed structural issues within systems of collective bargaining. Few of the plantation workers knew about Fair Trade. For them the Joint Body meetings were like any other work-related affair where they had to be present. As I mentioned in chapter 3, the Joint Body was not a democratic space; the management controlled every conversation. While much has been written about reasons for the rise of ethnic politics in Darjeeling, little research has been conducted on the gendered community dynamics of such politics and how they are affected by new transnational justice-promoting initiatives.
Foregrounding women plantation workers’ narratives, I try to underscore the gendered effects of this ethnic movement on plantation workplace politics and the limits it places on Fair Trade’s scope within a plantation at present. Justice within plantations has been elusive. I begin this chapter by describing the effects of ethnic subnationalism on plantation labor politics. This is followed by an analysis of the importance of competing communities within Sonākheti for plantation workers. The chapter also presents worker vignettes to show the effects of these political shifts on workers’ identities.
Ethnicized Subnationalism and Plantation Labor Politics
It is important to understand the specific effects of subnational politics on gendered labor politics. Whenever I asked my informants about their involvement with unions, I was often told, “You will not find the union now, but they will not let you sleep during election time.” This statement was a way of expressing frustrations with the union and its inability to address issues related to plantation work.
The dissociation of workers’ rights and union politics has a long history in Darjeeling’s “Nepali Community.” In the mid-1980s when the GNLF was slowly gaining importance, plantation unions were still dominated by the local branches of the Communist Party.1 However, from 1986 onward Subhash Ghising (the leader of GNLF and the chairman of the Hill Council) had already started his campaign for Gorkhaland. He took full advantage of the existing insecurity of Nepali youth (which I detailed in chapter 1) in the region, which finally made the movement extremely violent. Male youth were used as foot soldiers in the Gorkhaland movement. Ghising reinterpreted the clauses of the Indo Nepal Friendship Treaty2 (see Samanta 1996) to emphasize that Nepali migrants were unable to vote in India, and therefore, the treaty should be scrapped, and Nepali people should have their separate state within India. His comments found great support among people, especially since a huge number of Nepali people were ousted from the state of Assam and Meghalaya at that time. In reality, a majority of the Nepali people in India was voting, since their children and grandchildren were Indian citizens, having been born in India. However, Ghising made judicious use of these insecurities to convince average people to join the GNLF, thereby leaving the Communist Party.
At this time there was also a massive stagnation in Darjeeling’s tea industry. Exports suffered as other countries were gaining a foothold in the international tea market. Plantations delayed worker payment and bonuses. GNLF used this opportunity to show that the communist unions were ineffective in fighting the battles for common people in Darjeeling, especially since they were an outside political party. Culturally, the GNLF argued, they were not like the Gurkhas, so they could not understand the real problems of the region and were not well-versed in local problems. Other scholars, like Amiya K. Samanta, write that Ghising distributed anti-communist speeches in audiotape cassettes saying that communists were atheists and they did not want Nepali people to have their own state because their loyalty was toward West Bengal. In reality, most leaders of the CPIM in Darjeeling were Nepali.
In the post-Gorkhaland period, the local state and labor unions in Darjeeling were dominated by the GNLF. During 2005−7 (before the 2nd movement),3 the focus of the GNLF was to get the Nepali people in Darjeeling recognized as “tribal” so that they could get special benefits from the federal government. This involved the “reinvention” of Nepali “tribal” tradition, although the majority of the Nepali people adhered to the Hindu caste system and had various religious and cultural practices depending on caste affiliations. However, preoccupation with this new cultural turn defined the focus of the party (GNLF) and the local state in the late 1990s and early 2000s (see Middleton 2005).
Since its inception, the GNLF positioned itself as different from the plains people’s parties, especially the red parties (like CPIM). CPIM was seen as serving the interest of the state of West Bengal (in which Darjeeling is a district) and the people of the plains. The non-orthodox tea-producing districts bordering Darjeeling, after long-CPIM-dominated labor unions, at present are slowly affiliating with Trinamool Congress and its allies after the left’s historic defeat in West Bengal a few years back. Making people conscious about the stigma of the red party and its principles was a deliberate move to engender a new politics of difference. Adherence to any of the principles of the “red” party was considered incongruous with the political demands of the emerging Nepali state within India. Therefore, the worker-centric policy of the communist unions did not receive priority in the GNLF agenda.
One of the offshoots of this differentiation was that the GNLF encouraged plantation workers to work hard and not engage in militant trade unionism, which was a marked feature of unions in the plains. In my interviews, workers expressed this pride. Expressing pride was a positive motivation for average Nepalis who had to suffer the consequences of negative stereotypes about them, as outlined in chapter 1. Many workers told me that they understood the value of work because this was the only way they could survive. Workers in Darjeeling distinguished themselves from non-Nepali workers in the plains, who, according to my informants, were communists and did not want factories to survive. As proof of this claim they cited the numerous plantation closures in the plains. It seemed from their narratives as though the unions in the plains tea plantations were uselessly conducting a movement to stop work, just because of their party affiliation.
In regular conversation workers always related their hard work with the quality of the tea produced, as if their labor was of a different kind, like their ethnicity, climate, and environment. Workers knew about the high price of Darjeeling tea since they were almost forbidden to consume this green gold. Factory supervisors checked on whether women from the sorting department were stealing tea. One of the male workers once told me, “You know, sister, the British were very clever, and they taught us Nepalis everything about tea except for its taste. We learned how to produce tea, but we never learnt to appreciate the goodness of Darjeeling tea. This was probably good, otherwise our plantation would have stopped by now.” He made this last statement with great sarcasm. Other workers in the sorting department complained about the long hours and the low pay. This pride in work was always laced with complaints about the lack of water, the undemocratic plantation practices, and union busting. However, the hegemonic ideology of GNLF’s current vision became meaningful for average workers in these self-proclamations about being hard-working pāhāDi workers. These contradictions and ambiguities expressed by workers became beneficial for the GNLF in putting labor issues on the backburner until the second Gorkhaland movement re-prioritized development and employment generation as part of their ruling agenda.
Male GNLF members were constantly engaged in making the “Nepali Community” more conscious about their ethnicity. Being equal citizens of India and gaining respect became the priority, not improving the existing conditions of laborers within Darjeeling. A survey of documents at the time of the formation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council reveals that the demand for Gorkhaland was accompanied by a request to increase the quota for Nepali men in the army, the dismissal of the Indo Nepal Friendship Treaty, and more direct funds from the central government in Delhi for general development of Darjeeling. The central government, which also regulates the wages of plantation workers through the Tea Board of India, was never requested to increase the wages for plantation workers. Gorkhaland became a panacea for all the evils that existed within Darjeeling. The consequences of hegemonic subnational politics are evident in the following interviews and vignettes.
Chhāyā
Chhāyā and I were neighbors in one of the plantation villages. She was illiterate and could barely sign her name. She was among the most talked about women in the plantation because of her past labor activism work in the Women’s Wing of the communist-dominated unions in the 1980s. She was the leader of the Communist Party’s Women’s Wing, Mahilā Samity (Women’s Organization). She kept insisting from the beginning that she did not know much about Fair Trade, but she knew about organic agriculture because she supervised in the field. Chhāyā was also a Kāmdhāri (group leader). But I had other intentions for meeting her. I wanted to know about women’s past activism in plantations in order to understand why active women like Chhāyā had such little interest/knowledge about Fair Trade and current labor union politics.
Chhāyā, forty-eight in 2007, started as a child laborer in Sonākheti when she was ten years old. She was an active union member, and she changed parties (from the CPIM to GNLF) in 1984 when GNLF started dominating the labor unions. Though she shared the subnationalistic urge of Gorkhaland with other members of her plantation community and was a proud pāhāDi, she somehow found the preoccupation with Gorkhaland in Darjeeling’s “Nepali Community” stifling.4 Chhāyā told me that she used to hide and go to the CPIM meetings in Siliguiri and Darjeeling when the 1986 Agitation was brewing. Once the GNLF had started the movement, no other party or political opinion was tolerated.5 In fact, the situation in Darjeeling continues to be that way, where many of my informants feel pressured to join the 2nd Gorkhaland movement because of the fear of violence and of becoming unpopular in their communities.6
Chhāyā was one of the six female “field supervisors” known locally as Kāmdhāri. Chhāyā was a member of the Fair Trade−funded Joint Body,7 but I rarely saw her at Joint Body meetings. When I asked her the reason for her absence, she told me she was not aware that the Joint Body had any real benefit for the workers. I then urged her to talk more about why she thought that the Joint Body was not as effective as the union. Chhāyā told me that there were problems in the present GNLF-dominated union. Chhāyā liked unions because she expected them to provide a sense of community, a fellowship of concerned people who shared their ideas and understood each other’s problems. But she did not get that from the present GNLF union. She told me that from the beginning she was committed to the CPIM’s ideology. She liked the way CPIM trained them to understand workplace politics. I urged Chhāyā to talk more about her activism. From the interview I found out about her version of what the managers in daily conversation referred to as the “union problem.” Here are excerpts from Chhāyā’s interview:
Chhāyā: In the beginning there was no politics. But slowly problems began with our bonus and other benefits and a union was formed. Every plantation should have a union; it is an absolute necessity for our daily problems. Earlier we consulted the union in the smallest of disputes. This is why the union was important. But now there are no regular union meetings to discuss our issues. Now you see no one; they are all busy in Kurseong or Darjeeling town. Come election time, they will not let you rest in peace because they want our votes. I feel like our small ghumāuri8 group is like a union. We have unity and we care about each other. We try to solve our daily problems. We give each other hope and older sisters guide the younger ones. We teach them how to take care of themselves. We discuss how to save money and not waste it on alcohol. Even some men have started these groups, learning from us. They also have small kids and they know that mutual support is required at difficult times because our wage is not enough.
Me: What did you learn from your experiences in the union when you were active?
Chhāyā: I used to meet women who were elder than me in Kurseong. Women in important positions in the Women’s Wing of the Communist Party urged me to head the Mahilā Samity (Women’s Organization) in the plantation. I listened to them and learnt a lot. I used to travel to all the units in Sonākheti with some other women; we listened to each other’s experiences and problems; tried to find solutions to each other’s problems. I even went to Calcutta to consult senior members of the party. There was a lot of sharing and planning and a great sense of camaraderie. The party and the union worked out a system for dealing with the management.
Me: You say that the union is a necessity. So what is the state of the present union at Sonākheti?
Chhāyā: I was in CPIM. During the Agitation time, the older men in our locality came and explained to me that I should join the GNLF. As a Nepali, it was my duty to join our local party, so I joined. But I used to hide and go to all the CPIM meetings in Siliguri, Kalimpong, Kurseong, and Darjeeling town. I almost did not survive once as our vehicle was pelted on our way to Darjeeling to attend the CPIM meetings. Those were troubled times, but in my heart I always liked what CPIM taught us.
The GNLF always talked about “Gorkhaland.” CPIM on the other hand emphasized rights and entitlements of the average poor workers who are not looked after well in the plantation system. GNLF is not interested in the issues of workers; they are only interested in making us understand the significance of our land and making us conscious of our identity as Nepali. Yes, I understand the significance of the land we live in; we have lived here for so long, and our forefathers toiled here. There was no doubt that “Gorkhaland” was important for us because we needed a place in India which we could call our land. Technically, it was my duty to support the party of the hills which championed this cause. But that is not enough. There are other very important issues besides land. When I look deep into my heart I do not like the principles on which GNLF operates. I think the issue of workers’ rights has taken a backseat in the plantation. Before, we used to think how to take these issues up with the management; we used to strategize. Our party (CPIM) used to teach us how to negotiate and talk to big people in difficult situations. As small people, illiterate people, it was important for us to learn these strategies. We had friends in different plantations, we used to have important meetings and share information about how we small people could fight and negotiate with the management. Our leaders in the CPIM used to ask us to think about the most important things for our life as workers and then teach us how to place it before the management. If the management did not agree then we would have to let the leaders know and they would have a meeting with the planter sāhib. We had to choose our issues well. Our “company,” our “sāhib” is like a parent; you cannot fight with them on any old issue, and you have to be judicious to further our cause. One has to learn to strategize.
Within GNLF the preoccupation with Gorkhaland stood in the way of placing workers’ concerns before the management. This preoccupation with the issue of Gorkhaland is the source of all problems in Darjeeling. It has been twenty years since GNLF gained power. There are no jobs, and the youth do not know what to hope for. But I don’t feel motivated to attend the present union meetings because they are not concerned about workers’ rights. That is why I feel that the ghumāuri groups are important.
In 2007, more than twenty years after development of the first Gorkhaland movement in 1986, lives of women in Sonākheti—like Chhāyā’s—help us contextualize what the search for a local identity and state within the larger “Nepali community” has meant for labor rights for women workers within the plantation community. The frustration with unions was not just limited to women; male union members also shared these complaints. Knowing that Devilal was an active union person, I asked him how effective the union was in Sonākheti. As usual, he told me that it was not very active. Devilal was very forthcoming about helping me learn the names of other union members. I asked him why there was no union agitation here in Darjeeling, in spite of all the problems. He told me that whatever problems the union was having were on minor issues, nothing major. Usually, when a worker got warnings from the management about wrongdoings, he went with his people to negotiate with the management. If there were payment delays, then too, there was trouble, but the union did not push for any major changes.
The most interesting thing that Devilal told me was that union members were apparently not aware of the true terms of the Plantation Labor Act of 1951. Describing the union further he said, “They make demands just like that and they really have no teeth.” Moving on to the question of union issues in Darjeeling, Devilal mentioned that after the Agitation people ceased to be that active in politics. In his words, “People have lost interest in politics.” On a philosophical note, Devilal mentioned that people look for direction in their lives. Either it was politics, religion, or something else, and people in Darjeeling were now more into religion. People really “slacked” (he actually used the English word “slack”) after the Agitation, and of course this was used to describe the political inactivity of the people.9 It almost seemed that Devilal was referring to some kind of loss of interest and disillusionment with the current political situation, which impacted union politics in a negative way. He mentioned further that the unions were now more concerned with matters outside the plantation, not inside it. The unemployed male youth from the plantations were recruited to the party by union leaders to work for the GNLF. They were promised jobs in the local state and party offices around Darjeeling.
Competing Communities, Interstitial Spaces
The ineffectiveness of unions had compelled women to make alternative spaces for trying to meet some of their daily needs, and is evident from Chhāyā’s other comment documented in chapter 2: “Our ghumāuri group is like a small union where we women can openly discuss issues about our livelihood and work. We can give each other confidence.” In Chhāyā’s comments we can locate the different communities that exist within a Fair Trade−certified plantation. It brings to light the complex social matrix which an average plantation worker has to negotiate in his/her daily life—the Nepali Community, the Union, the ghumāuri group. These communities are in friction, and the dialectics among them are influenced by the changing politics of the region. Chhāyā’s comments take us to the heart of community and labor politics in Sonahketi and Phulbāri, where GNLF-led labor unions in the post-Agitation10 period gradually devoted more time and energy to further the demand for a separate Gorkha state or Gorkhaland. Until 2011 there was no categorical struggle for plantation reform or wage increases within regional political mobilizations. Chhāyā’s comments are deeply relevant to contextualize the interstitial politics (Springer 2006) within a Fair Trade−certified community of workers. It brings to attention larger structural issues that always remain outside the purview of Fair Trade. Academic criticism of these campaigns advances the idea that these ethical transnational initiatives after all, “advance a project of neoliberalism” (Blowfield and Dolan 2008:1); that they are bounded in a way that gives more agency to consumers-citizens in the first world rather than producers in the third world (Brooks 2006, xxi).
Chhāyā’s comments also uphold a peculiar scenario for feminist scholars studying the effects of globalization on women’s workplace politics. For feminist scholars, the idea of community remains central to understanding the limits and possibilities of women’s consciousness and agency in the context of globalization (Collins 2002). Such scholars identify community as a medium through which factory disciplining is enabled; it also provides women workers with an opportunity to navigate the strictures of factory or household disciplining (Ong 1987). However, when community dynamics become enabling for women to voice their grievances against perceived oppositional/inimical forces, and when they act as a barrier, requires closer attention. One has to explore the constant becoming of the community in question (Li 2001) and emerging forms of “workable sisterhoods (Berger 2006).
The multiple tendencies within a single community11 need to be acknowledged to understand the gendered consequences of articulation between these tendencies and political forces in the wider environment in which the community is enmeshed. In Darjeeling one has to look at how the change in local politics, from trade union−based to ethnicity-based, creates community dynamics with gendered effects. Below, I further outline the effects of the constant friction between the “plantation community” and the larger “Nepali/Gorkha Community.” The latter is the imagined community (Anderson 1991) that Nepali politicians want to convert to a separate state. The former or “plantation community” is the community in which my informants live and work; they have had kith and kin ties here for generations. A less-talked-about feature of plantation life is the ghumāuri12 group, which I discovered, after much difficulty, during my long-term fieldwork. Ghumāuri, as a community of women plantation workers, is not visible in the plantation public space.
I found out about ghumāuri through careful participant observation. Āshā and I met at a designated spot on January 12, 2007, to join her tea-plucking group. As we walked down the narrow pony road she met Sunita, another plantation worker. Āshā quickly went over to her, leaving me alone in the company of some local youth. From the corner of my eye I could see that she gave Sunita some money and whispered something to her. I could only grasp the last line of the conversation, “let’s talk about it some other time; how about tomorrow evening when we return.”
As soon as Āshā came to me, I asked her who Sunita was and why she gave her money. She said that she owed Sunita some money. I probed her, asking why she did not return it to her in front of me. Āshā did not answer in the beginning and avoided eye contact with me. She desperately tried to avoid the conversation, as if her whole communication with Sunita was insignificant. I tried to push further. Sensing my persistence Āshā told me that she cannot talk about it on the road where there were so many people. When we reached the designated spot in the plantation where Āshā was going to pluck tea leaves with her other group members, she told me about ghumāuri.
Women saved money through ghumāuri. In my sample of forty women plantation workers, thirty-seven were members of different ghumāuri groups. The meetings took place every two to three months. Women workers had these meetings during their lunch break or after work. They held these meetings during work break because at that time no field supervisors or managers would be doing rounds. Each woman saved between Rs. 50 and Rs. 100 per month. Each group had between eight and fifteen members revolving the pot of money.
A few weeks later, after the incident with Āshā, I attended their ghumāuri meeting. In this meeting, a woman plantation worker spoke at length about the financial problems she was having because her husband had to have a surgery, and there was no money in the house. Women in this ghumāuri group then started discussing from where they would collect money for her because the savings in their group was not enough. This woman also said that she was scared of the manager because she was not sure whether he liked her. Conversations continued about different possibilities for helping her. I had never witnessed this kind of a close interaction in the plantation before.
The next day, when I met Āshā, she told me how much she trusts me, that I was like her sister; therefore, that I was not allowed to tell anyone connected to the plantation management details about this group practice of ghumāuri, especially the plantation owner, his managers, and other workers.13 She feared that specific knowledge about women’s secret activities would raise the curiosity of managers and might result in a delay in her bonus payment.14 She said she was concerned about my knowledge about the women’s lives in the plantation. Because I knew that women wore gloves when picking tea leaves, a serious infraction of the way women are taught to pick when starting the job; I should not know that kind of thing. Women did this to protect their hands from abrasion and staining (see chapter 8 for more details on the politics of clean hands). She also made fun of me because I was so curious; she told me that she had never met any other visitor who was so interested in the activities of pluckers, so much so that she had decided to stay away from her husband for a year to spend time with “coolies.”15
As I gained more understanding of the political life of my interlocutors within Fair Trade−certified plantations, it was evident why women cherished these alternate collective spaces. Ghumāuri was an everyday secret, a therapeutic space for mitigating the unsustainability of wage work. Āshā, Chhāyā, and Lakshmi didi (discussed later) were active in various activities of labor unions. They were members of the Communist-leaning parties, especially their Women’s Wing, before GNLF came to power in the late 1980s. Now why did women plantation workers need an informal intimate space to survive plantations and Fair Trade? This incident proved to me how much women cherished these alternate spaces. In later interactions I understood that ghumāuri was a secret, a perceived therapy for many of their daily problems. Āshā, Chhāyā, and Lachmi didi (who I talk about later) were part of women’s union politics before, as I detail later in the chapter. When the CPIM was present, they were all members of the women’s wing of the CPIM. But why did women need these groups for sustenance in a Fair Trade−certified plantation?
In Darjeeling, women could not rely on the plantation community ties to take care of their workplace needs because of certain shifting party politics within the plantation community. The average daily pay was about $1.28 for a tea-plucker in Darjeeling, one of the lowest wage rates in the formal economy, according to the Indian Labor Bureau.16 Instead, women entered ghumāuri groups in large numbers. Women did not just identify male domination as the cause of their disillusionment (see also Dutta 2008, 220) with union politics. They pointed to something more complex in the politics of the region which had affected their communities and debilitated the power of collective bargaining institutions, leading to increased masculinization of union concerns. As I mentioned before, the union leaders were more interested in recruiting Nepali male youth to work for the GNLF.
The groups have been around in plantations for many years. My interlocutors could not trace their exact history, nor could other scholars in the region. But it was a regular feature in most plantations and was dominated by women. It was significant that women in Sonākheti and Phulbāri constantly upheld this group as an alternate space for them to mentor each other. But at one point in history there was a possibility of articulation between women’s issues in their small groups and the broader trade union movement that dominated the plantation community. As Chhāyā told me, now that the Mahilā Samity (the Women’s Wing of the Communist Party) was not there, the ghumāuri group became the only place where workplace politics and family issues could be discussed together without fear. She also mentioned that the Women’s Wing of the GNLF was useless.
Monmaya told me that before they used to play ghumāuri just for learning how to save money, but they gradually realized that the group had other benefits for women. Communist-dominated trade unions in Darjeeling (pre-1984) were largely dependent on the support of women because they formed the majority of Darjeeling’s workforce. The plantations were also the toughest places for the GNLF to influence until the Gorkhaland movement had turned violent (Samanta 1996, Madan Tamang quote from Telegraph, July 28, 2008).
My life history interviews with older plantation workers establish that Mahilā Samity networks had close ties with these localized women’s groups. But when the GNLF leaders started mobilizing the community to rally around the issue of Gorkhaland, they did not just have to depend on women. There were plenty of unemployed local male youth to lend themselves to a cause, to please the local party bosses. When Gorkhaland become the priority within local parties and labor unions, neglect of localized women’s efforts to organize became routine.17 Since every household had its sons or brothers in the GNLF, women felt that their needs were not considered a priority, although they backed the efforts of the GNLF by keeping their silence on labor issues. Women still hope that the young men in the plantation might eventually get some employment. Women’s issues gradually receded from the public realm, but came to occupy center stage in ghumāuri.
Feminist scholars who study the politics of women’s activism rightly propose that there is no straightforward explanation of why women actively participate in labor politics and why not (Fernandes 1997; Mills 2005). Feminists anthropologists have also cautioned against hasty conclusions about the meanings of women’s absence or presence in so-called public domain (Mahmood 2001). What becomes a political realm (Berger 2004) and where women’s activism and mobilization can manifest itself is an emerging question. There cannot be any a priori assumption about women’s power. Producing situated place-based knowledge about why women protest (Baldez 2002), and the conditions that make putatively docile, “nimble-fingered” women belie their powerless images marks the cutting edge of research on women’s political activities (See Mills 2005, 119). Building on these works, Everyday Sustainability proposes a closer look at the changing nature of labor union politics within plantation communities where women live and work.
Many scholars see community as a hegemonic space (Ong 1987; Collins 2002). However, it is important to note the nature of women’s activism and its imbrication with the political becoming of the local community in which women’s aspirations take hold. Analysis of women’s participation in labor struggles presents two scenarios. In one scenario off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and global patterns of production erode the possibility for women to use the “moral” face-to-face ties through which they had earlier voiced their workplace grievances. Collins (2002) calls this loss of community, “deterritorialization.” The other scenario is a little bit different where nimble-fingered third-world docile workers are able to voice their concerns in unions through “cultural struggle” within patriarchal societies (Ong 1987; Mills 1999). Here, patriarchy presents women with a different situation where women articulate their anxieties and displeasures by invoking community relations of paternalism and/or religious or kinship ties, by using discursive strategies so that they are not accused of violating cultural norms (see also Mills 2005; Lynch 2007; Jamal 2005). The general conclusion is that women in the global workplace face adversities at various levels that make it difficult for them to join formal labor organizing in spite of many oppressive labor management practices that otherwise plague them as workers and as women. Community dynamics become pivotal for women’s inactivity/activity in political battles.
Close observation of the political activities of women plantation workers presents an interesting caveat in existing feminist debates about women’s activism within transnational production systems. Plantation workers in Darjeeling do not have to fear deterritorialization, or loss of community, in the same way as the women workers of the maquiladoras. Darjeeling tea can only be grown in Darjeeling, thereby enjoying the benefits of place-specific branding. Maquiladoras can move across borders, because garments can be manufactured anywhere in the world as long as the raw materials can be supplied “just in time.” Any threats from workers about unionizing or of unions raising questions about worker abuse or pay propel companies to move to a new location that can offer “safer” production zones. In Darjeeling, capital becomes spatially fixed, so why does that not enable workers who produce “Fair trade” to raise their voices for a wage increase or better work conditions in formal production spaces?
Women plantation workers in Darjeeling had lived and worked in the same communities where their ancestors grew up and worked. Male supervisors, union leaders, factory clerks, and average plantation workers have shared kinship ties or were at least neighbors for a long time. Like the women workers in Malaysia (Ong 1987), women plantation workers could have used extended family ties (especially with men who are used by the management to discipline workers) to voice some of their grievances about poor salary or nepotism. But my interviews reveal that kin-community ties were not mobilized because women did not want to become unpopular in their communities and households by asking men to change the priority within the current unions. Women workers in the plantation found that participation in the unions was useless. However, they silently hoped that the union would do something for their sons, brothers, or husbands.
It was interesting to note that in the mid-1980s, some of the same women were active in the labor union politics. Even now women plantation workers joined their male counterparts at important political party events and public demonstrations as a show of solidarity. If women plantation workers in Darjeeling did not have to bear the brunt of “deterritorialization” like their counterparts in Bangladesh or Mexico, they had other reasons for being sidelined in the union. Women’s current frustrations with unions were even more striking because their plantations were Fair Trade−certified. Instead of unions, women found solace in ghumāuri groups to take care of some of their economic and workplace needs.
Conclusion
Union-busting was a common feature in India, and prominent South Asian scholars have tried to theorize why the trade unions have become ineffective in a climate where neoliberal economic policies have gained ground (Bannerjee 1991), but the lack of effective collective bargaining had deeper roots. What was remarkable in the case of Darjeeling was that a shift in union politics from a “politics of redistribution” (workers’ equality) to a “politics of recognition” (ethnicized minority politics) intensified the neglect of workers’ needs and rights, especially women workers’ rights. Men envied their wives’ salaries and regular employment (as I will show in chapter 7), and male youth were seen as more vulnerable. The Fair Trade efforts were perceived as a sham since plantations had not raised the minimum wage for a long time. In short, my ethnographic findings reveal that the peculiar tactic of the dominant political party in its drive to raise ethnic consciousness among Nepali people had weakened the movement for workers’ rights within the workplace. Workers interviews and their reflections on life are a testimony to this reality. Further voluntourism contributed to privatizing the plantation public sphere by not engaging with unions at all.
Lachmi didi, Chhāyā, Kamalā (from chapter 4), and Āshā’s subjectivities and comments were important reflections on how everyday women plantation workers understood their place in unions and workplaces. Workplace frustrations have not subsided with the change in union politics, but were expressed in ghumāuri groups. Workers wanted more people to know about these inadequacies, especially Fair Trade−certifying institutions, but they feared retribution from employers and male relatives. Illiterate women like Lachmi didi and Chhāyā frequently criticized the strategic use of their images and their talents at the present moment. Lachmi didi told me that whenever the “kuires” (whites) come to the plantation she takes them around. She further added:
We do not know each other’s language. We are called to the meeting of the Joint Body where nothing substantial is discussed. We are shown in a way that says nothing about our lives and frustrations. I know the real story; I know what our lives are like. The tourists and other whites take photographs, and I hate it because we are all supposed to smile and they never send them back.
Lachmi didi continued that there were people from both Indian and Western NGOs/ Sansthās who made films of them. She never understood why foreigners had so much interest in showing a “coolie” in a “picture” (film).
My interactions revealed to me women’s very subjective interpretations of political ideology, work, and hegemony. Sherry Ortner urges anthropologists to explore “how the condition of subjection is subjectively constructed and experienced, as well as the creative ways in which it is—if only episodically overcome” (2005, 34). For Ortner, subjects are not just culturally or religiously produced and not simply defined by a particular position in a social economic matrix. They are not just an effect of power but are subjects defined by a complex set of feelings, anxieties, and hope in a given historical moment (see also Ahearn 2001). Women plantation workers like Chhāyā and Lachmi’s stories, and their involvement in gendered projects of value through ghumāuri groups demonstrates women’s efforts to navigate multiple structures of domination that coalesce together to make their voices fade to the background in a Fair Trade plantation extolling the virtues of women’s leadership.