GLENLYON

(Acreage?)
Category - High Grown
1952/53

     In July 1952, at the age of nearly 181/2 years, I went up to Glenlyon in Agarapatna to start my six months of "creeping", a term said to have originated from the tongue-in-cheek perception that during this period the new inductee would be, figuratively, made to creep under the bushes to learn the basics of planting. At this stage, this did not include manufacture or administration for me.

     My training was to be in the hands of the PD of Glenlyon, comprising the divisions of Glenlyon and Stair, with my training being on Glenlyon division.

     To learn the day to day minutae of running a plantation I was put in the very capable hands of Thevarayan, the Head Kangany, who was in charge of Glenlyon division, and was very knowledgeable not only in respect of the field but also in respect of labour management. From the PD and Thevarayan, as well as all the very helpful lesser lights, many with much light to shed on a multitude of subjects each according to his own expertise, I gained an exceptional foundation of knowledge. I also learned a lot from the PD through his knowledge and the experiences he related to me, as well as a lot about the CTP, its standards and its values.

     Personnel management as a science was not part of training at any stage. It was not a recognised science at the time of training or later. It was simply a matter of hit or miss depending on the aptitude and talent of each PD or SD.

     From the first day I was in my element and in my enthusiasm even set up a small experiment to do with "banjies". Banji is the English derivation of the Tamil word 'vungi', the term given to the periodically appearing dormant terminal bud of a tea shoot. This dormancy, if widespread on a bush, results in a reduction in yield and, consequently, had to be picked off by the pluckers on each plucking round so as to stimulate new growth. It was then, as later, a constant battle to get pluckers to do this properly.

     I was interested to know the period of dormancy of a banji and, to ascertain this, tied different coloured threads to various banjis on a bush near the office so as to monitor what occurred.

    One gathered that it was usual for creepers to make gaffes and/or embarrass themselves in some way and I was no exception. It was perfectly understandable that one would make mistakes when learning a new language, Tamil in this case, on the run. One was just thrown in at the deep end, as communication with the workforce was not possible except in Tamil. Of course, the senior field staff and salaried staff spoke English.

     Mistakes were sympathetically and respectfully accepted by all, but there were occasions when my mistakes were humorous or hilarious and caused respectfully stifled mirth.

      As part of my field wear I had brought a pair of riding breaches that came in handy because tea bushes could be wet and the wetness cold. They also protected against scratches from tea branches. (4)One day I was inspecting the work of some tea pluckers and came to the top of the embankment of a road. The embankment was about six feet high and the simplest way around this obstacle was to jump down - a feat well within the capacity of this fit "ex swimming champion". I jumped down, and as I landed, flexed my knees to lessen the impact. This was very effective but much to my consternation I heard the sound of the rending of cloth. I instantly suspected the obvious calamity and realised that extreme discretion was called for as most of the pluckers, all women, were on or near the lower side of the road resuming their positions prior to moving down the hill. I kept close to the bank, with my back towards it and surreptitiously sought the cause of the rending sound I had heard. My palm and fingers revealed a tear of about ten inches down the seam of the seat of my breeches. The tight fit of the breeches below my knees and at the rear had prevented any 'give'! Fortunately, I had underpants on. So now what to do? There was only one solution and that was to depart gracefully and without disgrace so, keeping my rear as close as possible to, and facing, the bank, I moved away from the plucking 'gang' giving instructions as I went. As soon as I was clear, I dived into the tea field and headed towards home taking great care to avoid every living soul.

     Approaching the bungalow another panic hit me. What if the servants see me? Quite irrational behaviour no doubt, but there it was - a combination of youth and a totally new environment. Then, instead of doing the sensible thing and going through the front door where one is least likely to come across a servant, I went through the kitchen and was sprung! Also, needless to say, the most sensible thing would have been to brazen it out and say See what happened! - and laugh it off if anyone spotted the damage.

     Clerical work to be learned was stocktaking and entering and reconciling the checkroll. This latter consisted of a book containing the names of all the workers and non-salaried staff, and in this book one had to enter at the end of each day, what work if any was done by each person. Another book contained a list of all types of work done on a plantation during a calendar year and one had to enter, by a head count or other means, the number of workers who did each type of work for that day. At the end of the day, the total number of workers marked in the checkroll as having worked on the day would have to be the same as the total number of workers entered by type of work. For example, if the division had a workforce of 300, and 200 worked on the day with 100 of them plucking tea, 50 weeding, 25 lopping shade trees and 25 spraying (total 200) the two books were reconciled. This example is oversimplified as, in reality, there were about 150 possible work types that could be worked on any given day.

     If the two books did not reconcile, the process of finding the error/s could be long and tedious and, no matter how long it took, the reconciled books had to be in the PD's office at 7.30 am the next morning - and no excuses! There were occasions, both on Glenlyon and elsewhere when I would be up till 1 or 2 am working from, say, 6 pm, searching for the mistake/s.

     The daily routine on a plantation started with "muster" which was held at 7 am each working day prior to the commencement of work at 7.30 am and it was a requirement that the SD/Creeper attend it(5) . The workers for the day gathered at the muster ground and were allocated to various jobs singly or in groups known as gangs. From an organizational point of view muster was pivotal to the proper functioning of the plantation. Each morning after muster, what was called the Muster Chit was completed and sent to the PD. The Muster Chit was a printed list of all the main work types and each detailed the worker distribution by work type, for the day.

     Another book which went to the PD each morning was the Diary. This was a foolscap size book which was ruled up and completed daily by the SD, or Creeper, or the staff member responsible for the Division, and contained a tabulation of all the fields(6) showing the number of days since each was last plucked and, therefore, when it was next due, the number of pluckers on the day, the acres plucked, the pluckers used per acre and the crop harvested for the day, all by the field.

     It was important that fields were plucked on time, usually on a frequency of 7 - 10 days depending on season and the time since the field was last pruned, as over-mature leaf stems contained hard fibres were detrimental to the quality of the final product. The Diary also tabulated important work such as weeding, draining, lopping, manuring and pruning, detailing the number of workers, the acreage completed and the workers/acre for the day, previously and to date. From this the PD could monitor costs against estimated (budgeted) costs. The Diary was also one means of daily communication between the PD and his divisional heads. At times, depending on the PD, this communication could range from complementary to critical, and from gentle to violent and sometimes rude!

     The usual end of the day event was evening muster where the workers gathered to submit their names for entry in the checkroll and the pluckers brought in their leaf to be weighed and entered against their names. In the interim it was the SD's job, and therefore that of the Creeper, to specifically check work in progress, or recently completed, as well as implement (in the case of the Creeper, to learn and implement) the fundamental principle of P.O.C. = Planning, Organization and Control under the direction of the PD and others. The weighing of the leaf picked by pluckers was done three times a day - mid morning, noon and at the end of the day.

     Good powers of observation were a distinct advantage in plantation management because during "management by walking around"(7) one scanned, or should scan, the fields close and far for any sign of the unusual or the imperfect, or any movement which could indicate legitimate or illegitimate activity, and at a distance, a subtle variation in colour of the 'teascape' could necessitate investigation.

    As an indication of the complexity of "management by walking around" on a plantation one can point to the fact that, in old plantings there were about 3500 bushes to the acre(8) and just on the surface of each bush were up to, say, 50 potential problem points - that equates to 175,000 such points per one acre, and that for plucking only!

    Although the management of a plantation was complex, when the complexities became second nature there was no burden at all.

    At this time the Company was in the process of opening up more sections of the plantations to road transport. This entailed the positioning and cutting of new roads, or the extension of existing ones, all cut by hand. There was one such in progress on Glenlyon so I was able to learn about this aspect of work. I put my hand to plucking but soon discovered that to do it well was an art, an art at which some excelled, and which required a lot of practice; for that I had neither the time nor the need. With pruning, however, I made it a point to learn the art of handling the knife as well as doing the job properly at a reasonable speed. Since then, during the pruning season on the plantations I was on, I made it a point to prune a few bushes each time I visited a pruning gang to keep in touch so that, should the occasion arise(9) , I would be able to demonstrate the ability to do the job as well, if not as speedily, as an accomplished pruner and then say, 'If I can do this number of bushes in half an hour you can do x number for a day'. I never had to do this, as the threat was sufficient, particularly because they knew I would do it if the need arose.

    The pruning knife had a wooden handle one and a half to two fists long with either a parrot-beak like blade or a straight blade with a hooked end. The blades were six to nine inches long and honed to extreme sharpness. To test its sharpness when honing his knife a pruner would apply it to a small patch on his arm to see if it shaved it easily.

    The pruners were the self-affirmed 'elite' of the workers and many of them were "young bucks" and, consequently, prone to volatility. The self-affirmed elitism, together with the volatility, made the pruning gangs one of the major points of potential dispute. The pruning field was also, potentially, the most dangerous because each worker was in possession of a deadly weapon. However, I never had cause for fear nor had anyone I knew, although there were stories of extremely dangerous situations encountered elsewhere.

    One way of easing workers' drudgery and maintaining satisfactory work output was the practice of setting 'tasks'. Instead of working eight hours, a particular amount of work (workers per acre per day) was set or agreed upon, taking into account various relevant factors applying to the specific work, and this was called a task. Working at their own speed, the workers completed the task and went home. At times, the setting of a task became a contentious issue which, if unresolved, resulted in a strike. When I was on Glenlyon there was such a dispute on Scrubs where a pruning task of 225 had been set and was in dispute. The Scrubs PD sought the help of my PD and it was arranged that two of the best Glenlyon pruners would go to Scrubs one day and demonstrate what task was achievable. They were given the bus fair (and, no doubt, money for food) but they walked cross-country from Agrapatana to Nuwara Eliya, a great distance, arrived by 7.30 am, completed 350 bushes each by 2 pm and left for home. That was the end of the dispute.

    The tea bushes in all tea fields were planted in rows, originally with the rows running up and down the hills and later, with the advent of replanting old fields, on the contour. To avoid confusion and to facilitate supervision, each worker took a row and when this was finished took another whilst each worker maintained his or her position in the gang. Thus, it was possible to determine who did what where for a short time after it was done or, in the case of tasks, to determine whether an individual had finished their task.

    Tea pluckers in the later stages of pregnancy were allocated safe areas in which to work and all women workers were entitled to twelve weeks maternity leave(10) on full pay at the standard rate. Nursing mothers were allowed time off three times a day to feed their babies.

    In the CTP one thing given a lot of emphasis was the preparation of the plantation for a visit of the General Manager (and in later years the VA), the Chairman or a London Director. The PD went round the plantation with the SD (if he had one) and a small gang of workers, looking for anything that was wrong or out of place and it was put right. Potholes in roads were filled in and bumps levelled, visible weeds uprooted, roadside compost heaps were tidied into perfect rectangles and so on ad infinitum. Also, guard stones and culverts were whitewashed, bridges and signs painted and the plantation titivated to give a good impression. We did this once on Glenlyon.

    It was when I was creeping that I first came across the publications of the Tea Research Institute of Ceylon, the leading such institute in the world. These were of great interest to me and I read them avidly then and thereafter although, as in college, my interest was more in the practical than the theory.

    The art of labour management was largely a matter of learning by observation combined with one's innate skill. Involving as it did hundreds of workers a well-balanced mixture of charisma, tact, confidence, presence, firmness and caring most often engendered respect.

    As a result of my belief in duty and responsibility, I was a taskmaster. I insisted on a fair day's work for a fair day's pay and was insistent on a high standard of work and none of those training me suggested that I was over-zealous in this regard. On the other hand, most of the workers and kanganies tried to do as little work as possible, something common on all plantations.

    Plantation workers were paid in cash by the tenth of each month basically according to the number of days each had worked in the preceding month, and this amounted to a considerable amount of money. The cash was delivered by a contractor, in bulk by the denomination, then set out on a desk from which it was counted and handed to each worker, or their representative, as their name was called out. It was quite a feat to accomplish this task quickly and efficiently as hundreds of workers were involved, all milling around if allowed to, with the pay for each having to be counted and handed over and some having queries or pointing out an error in the counting. Because their names were called out in the order in which they appeared in the checkroll they knew when their names would come up. I was pleased when I achieved a paying rate of Rs 300 per minute - I think the biggest denomination of note was Rs 50 and the average wage for adults about Rs 65. A KP counted the coins which he then handed to me to put with the notes I had counted, and hand to each worker.

    Adjoining Glenlyon was state jungle from which wild boar used to come on to the plantation and root around in the tea, on occasion attacking a worker. Also, though infrequently, a leopard would be noticed in the tea during the day and cause much alarm. My PD and I, together with two workers, Mendis and Karthan, often went out at night hunting the wild boar which were very dangerous, particularly if hurt. We once had a shooting platform built in the jungle over a pig trail but they never used the trail after that. At times, it was very cold out at night, especially when sitting on the small platform with three others and no room to move. The gun barrel could get so cold that it stuck to one's fingers. These nights out often resulted in no sleep, but there was no holiday the next day.

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