5 Colonial Pasts and Fair Trade Futures

Abstract

This chapter examines the distribution of fair trade benefits and changing modes of production and regulation on Darjeeling tea plantations in India. Using regulation theory, it considers how colonial tea production, despite gross inequalities, left independent Indian tea gardens with two key regulatory institutions: the auction and labor laws. It also explores how fair trade both challenges and advances neoliberalization and how neoliberal and colonial institutions regulate social justice on Darjeeling tea plantations. It notes the destabilizing effect of fair trade on plantation tea production as well as the obstacles of certifying a plantation as fair trade, and shows that fair trade's certification standards for worker welfare are weaker than the rights formerly granted plantation workers under Indian law. Finally, it suggests that most of the benefits of higher fair trade tea prices and marketing connections have accrued to owners and not to their employees.