| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This 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 of sardars in 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. The sardars were 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 and sardars, which successive legislative interventions failed to break. Moreover, the notion that the sardar would be a more benign agent of recruitment was repeatedly proved false
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