AGRICULTURAL MNC’S AND ALCOHOLICS: AN INSIGHT INTO VALPARAI

A few weeks back me and two friends rode into a quaint and pre colonial hill station called Valparai. The town has very minimal tourists and is a haven for people who enjoy self exploratory trips and would definitely put the overrated Ooty to shame. The station is filled with a lot of tea estate holding companies who mainly export their produce. We were acquainted with a certain Mr. Abhay of Tata Tea who was courteous enough to let us stay in his house.

I was pleasantly surprised with the amenities provided for his designation (assistant manager). He had 3 people to look after his household chores, a gardener, a sweeper and a cook. All his bills right from electricity, phone up to his fuel (100 ltrs quota) were all taken care of. What’s more his CTC was around 22-25k; this seemed like my dream job. The initial infatuation faded as 3 pegs of whiskey went down with the sun. We got talking about his hobbies and how he killed time. Alcohol, phone calls, clubs and parties amongst the managers ruled the roost. The lifestyle seemed like a desperate attempt to negate boredom. The only real hobby seemed to be photography, which I noticed was prevalent amongst all the estate managers. It then occurred to me that the offered lifestyle was a legal bribe the agricultural MNC’s were onto to pave the way for people accept a lonely job. Speaking to the HGM in a party a few days later, my doubts were confirmed when he said the most important criteria in selection was if a person was disposed to a lonely life in an estate. Speaking to other managers some of them told me they started consuming alcohol only after they joined this job. When I suggested to them about such a wonderful opportunity for them to save money, they burst out laughing. They blew up all their money on alcohol and parties! Every alternate day they have a party and take turns hosting it. Their capacity for alcohol was also incredible; most of them could down a bottle easily. All the women who were married to the estate managers taught at the local schools for a paltry sum of money. They loved the parties too and were excellent hosts and conversationalists.

After a few days at Abhay’s house we went to meet the manager of Bombay Burma trading company, Mr. Prashanth. A lot of these estates have their presence around South East Asia and Africa as Mr. Prashanth informed us. We got to look around the tea factory. The wage scheme followed here was really a piece of work. The workers were paid daily wages until 3 in the evening and they could work if they wanted to after that for extra wages; so at an average they earned about 200-250 Rs a day! No wonder looking at the net I found that Valparai was ranked about 7th in the wealth index of India. They seemed to have struck quite a balance between employers and employees which is quite unheard of in India. Later on we visited another assistant manager Mr. Aiyappa. Being a close friend of mine from Madras Christian College more dark sides of the job were revealed by him as he spoke of backstabbing, laborers trying to scare him and of course rampant alcoholism. Knowing my personality it really seemed like a suicide mission in taking up this job.

I left Valparai with a really heavy heart but fully aware which job would best support me if I ever plan to write a book!!