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PAT is 50 and thriving
S. MUTHIAH
IT WAS in 1893 that the planters of South India decided to form a federation of the district planters' associations and headquartered the United Planters Association of Southern India (UPASI) in Madras, the capital of the Presidency, in whose western and southern reaches most of the plantations lay. Independence and the emergence of new States, each with its own taxes, labour and welfare laws, and land policies, made the task of tackling all this variety impossible for a central but small organisation like UPASI. And, so, in 1954, each southern State with planting interests formed its own association.
The Association of the Planters of Madras (APM) was formed on April 1, 1954, with L. Aldred as its chairman succeeded by L. W. Russell as the first elected chairman. The founding committee of 16 included three Indians - H.C. Kothari, A.V. Thomas and K. Ramaswami Mudaliar.
The APM in time became the Planters' Association of Tamil Nadu (PAT). To mark the 50th anniversary of its beginnings, it recently published a rather comprehensive illustrated commemorative volume of histories, reminiscences and essays on the planting industry.
Quizmasters, I am sure, will find it invaluable. But let me start with a question to them. What are the planting districts of Tamil Nadu? I am sure they'll get the Anamallais, the Nilgiris and the Shevaroys in double quick time. They might even get Nilgiris-Wynaad. But what of the other four? They are Bodi-Pulneys, The High Wavys, Singampatti and Kanniyakumari. I wonder how many have heard of the first three. To bring them and others up-to-date on these and other districts, here's a bit of history.
The Anamallais were opened by G. A. `Carver' Marsh and C. R. T. Congreve from 1897, first with coffee, but with tea becoming dominant from 1911.
The Shevaroys are coffee country near Salem and were opened in 1825 by M.D. Cockburn, collector of Salem District.
The Nilgiris from the beginning favoured tea. The earliest experimental plantings were in 1835, but plantation scale development began in 1859, with a Mann and a Rae the pioneers. Between experiment and opening of tea plantations, Cockburn, who had been transferred here, introduced coffee in 1843. But tea, which his daughter began planting, turned out to be the major crop.
The Nilgiris-Wynaad, where the Blue Mountains edge Malabar, was opened for coffee by James Ouchterlony in 1845. Tea was introduced in 1874 and became a major crop in 1889.
The Bodi-Pulneys, the Kodaikanal-Bodinayakanur-Palanis, opened its first estate in 1846, but began developing only between 1907 and 1925. Coffee on plantation scale, however, was planted only from the 1950s. This is also cardamom country.
The High Wavys, near Theni, is, to all intents and purposes, one large estate comprising several plantations. The first of these was opened for tea in 1927; it was from 1931 that tea spread over thousands of acres. Just as the High Wavys is virtually Hindustan Lever's tea estates, India Plantations, Singampatti is the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation's. The corporation began planting tea here in 1929.
Kanniyakumari is mainly rubber. The first small plantation here was opened in 1902. But it was to be a decade later that larger rubber plantations developed mainly through the efforts of Thomas Alexander, Williams Coombs and Reginald Garnier.
Till the 1960s, the plantations of Tamil Nadu played a major role in the economy of the State. Environmentalists have never been particularly happy with the plantation economy, but Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka owed much in the first half of the 20th Century to their plantations. Today, these plantations the pioneers created are memorials to those who opened for productive use land that few wanted.
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