Commercial recruiting and Informal Intermediation: debate over the sardari system in Assam tea plantations, 1860–1900

Abstract

AbstractThis paper engages with Rajnarayan Chandavarkar's argument that the importance accorded to the intermediation of sardars/jobbers in colonial labour arrangements followed from the perception of the Indian peasant as static and immobile, requiring especial effort at recruitment, but that, over time, employers grew resentful of the power and control acquired by these intermediaries. Drawing on this insight, the paper examines the role ofsardarsin the recruitment system of the Assam tea plantations and the ways in which they were promoted by the planters and the state in an attempt to loosen the stranglehold of professional contractors. Thesardarswere presented as the solution to abuses of Assam recruitment and portrayed as non-market agents recruiting within the closed world of kin, caste and village relationships. Towards the late-nineteenth century, however, a nexus developed between the contractors andsardars, which successive legislative interventions failed to break. Moreover, the notion that thesardarwould be a more benign agent of recruitment was repeatedly proved false.