.o 'rt 'úo D a{eeling Recon sidered o o. Hi s t or i e s, P olitic s, Enu ir ent s -ú onm d o d o o Þ. d edited by É .i t TowNs¡rso MrpoLEToN ønd o d Sene SHNsTpTRMAN .Ét àR1aj G ëoa'É ôd LC rì o g.E zããT 3Ë-= -oc¡.9 \-/ c a '=:a)o9ø= -É FåÈ5 oo ,€ã3eäs'58 õ.sE-9.90 ôÀ õ rOYØzE.=o6196Þ Ê¿ o. lrl o. I k boxBdô, .E-o3 .oËkloY- dLr o.trd ¡ ,.-ÀÆô!.ìø o. P i.t >åÈ OXl.ORD ì.INIVERSITY PRBSS 9 SubnøtionalOccupøtions A Yeør in the Life of tbe DørjeelingTeø Mønøgement TrainingCentre Sarah Besþ* n 4 July 2008 a large group of 20-something men ser on a concrete patio outside an ofñce suite in the busding bazaar in Darjeeling. They had been lured by an adverrisemenr for a new management-training institute. The advertisement had appeared úre day before in the locd Nepali language newspaper. Retired Indian-Nepali (or Gorkhd) tea plantation managers, supported by a host of Gorkha dignitaries hailing from the local polidcal party, West Bengal stare offices, * Funding was provided by the Fulbrighr Hays Doctoral Dissertarion Research Ab¡oad Program, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the America¡ Council of Learned Societies, the Michigan Sociecy of Fellows, and Brown University. All erlors ere my own, 198 ranks conrinued after the takeover of plantations by Indian companies. 199 v This history of poverty a¡rd discrimination undergirds a longstanding tt) g¡ a É movement to separate Darjeeling from the state of West Bengal and form a new state of Gorkhala¡rd within the Indian union. \ Tea plantation fields and the workers within them are prominent in Ø Movement, the political symbolism and discourse of the Gorkhaland a The movement seeks both to undo the political economic inequities of s the plantation system and to vigorously counter racial stereorypes thet q portrey Nepalis in Darjeeling es exotic outsiders, rether than rightful residents. The tension between these two asPirations was palpable in the youth sitting outside the DTMTC on thet summer day. Many of the would-be sardents hailed from tea plantations. Some had worked in call centres elsewhere in India, but had returned home because they were unsatisÊed with nocnrrnal urban work. Most had Ênished high school, or even college, but had been unable to find employment.'When I talked with them outside the inauguration, students did not frame their decisions to ettend the DTMTC within the overtly political rhetoric of the Gorkhaland Movement. Rathø they described them- selves as unemployed and looking for work. Management training which offered translatable, compartm e¡talízebIe, and commensurable knowledge, would land t'hem a job. A job, in turn, would enable them to become upwardly mobile citizens of India, but not necessarily of Gorkhaland. The students huddled together; nervously chatdng as official speeches inaugurating the DTMTC proceeded inside. They knew the story that the speakers would tell. They would tdk about how, on or offthe planta- tions, few skilled jobs were available to the growing number of young men and women with high school or college educations. The DTMTC would a¡rswer a growing call by the GJM, the leading local political parry that advocares for an independent federal state of Gorkhaland within the Indian union, to create jobs in Darjeeling for what politicians called the'educated unemployed'. With Gorkha sovereignty, qualiry local jobs would go to Gorkhas, to whom they rightfully belonged. According to the DTMTC's founders, Gorkhas, by virtue of building occupying and maintaining Darjeelingt plantation landscape for generations, possessed a¡ innate knowledge of the tea industry. This knowledge was valuable, but it needed to be honed. Training Gorkhas to be managers would also contribute to the GJM's larger polidcal project of exerting territorial 1 sovereignty over an area conüolled by capital interests that politicians See Newman & Company (1900:66_91), arrd laypeople alike identiñed as sitting in Kolk¿ta, not Darjeeling. 200 The nodon of linking subnacional recognirion to education is nor a berween the Êrst major Gorkhaland agitarion in the mid,1980s, and 20r v the second, which began in late 2OO7 .It was these young people who U) o lt¡ were often portrayed in GJM rhetoric as rhe main benefi.ciaries of terri- É torial sovereignty, but as the case of the DTMTC highlights, they were s. ú also the group perhaps most cynical about the movemenr's potential ro t^ effect change. Students had ro reconcile a spatial disjuncrure between tended to describe the o region's educated youth as wayward and in need Gorkhala¡d and management training as an educational genre. They of discipline. In rhis, rhe situation in Darjeeling is distinct from rhe had to Êgure out how to be subjects of both a place-based movemenr situation ca in other parts of India, where subnational subjecrivity and for ethnic recognition that valued territorial 6xiry, and a netional educacion have been closely linked ,2 or inNepal, where snrdent political trend in vocational and managerial training that valued mobiliry over activism is strong.3 identity. Across India, subnarional struggles have consistently been ardcu- The studentí vision of training required a suppression of polidcs, lated on the basis of underdevelopment. The newly formed sates of while the teachers' vision saw training as always alreaåy political. The Unarakhand and Telangana are good examples. In the Gorkhaland assertion that education has non-political value, as Macei Candea has Movement, however, issues of unemployment, precarity, and distribudon argued, is not simply a sþ of the aati-polidcs of the market or of of resources have consistendy raken a back sear ro rights based. on the development discourse.4 In Candeai eccounr of Corsican educarion, recognition of identiry whether ethnic, cribaf or Gorkha. As I describe teachers who identifred elsewhere as Corsican nationalisrs insisted that below the DTMTC was ¡hus an arrempr to reconcile the tension within the classroom was e non-political space. In Darjeeling by conrrast, it the movement between an aspiration of economic development and an was students who resisred the politicÞacion of education. The educated aspiration of ethnic recognition. unemployed I met at the DTMTC believed in rhe idea of Gorkhaland, For the DTMTC to be successfuf teachers and studencs arike had ro but they were less convinced of its potential to effect meaningfirl change Ênd a way ro see dremselves as borh potential managers and as proud. in their lives. GJM rhetoric couched ¿r" r¡¡r'ggle for Gorkhaland as a Gorkhas. Over dre course of the single year in which the DTMTC long-term goal that might take generations ro achieve and as a revoludon ot impos- to which youth might need to sacriÊce years of rheir lives. Managerial rhe srory training on the orher hand, oriented students ro whatJane Guyer calls in India. the near fuure.5 Across India, studenrs seeking manegemenr rraining An analysis of colonial ere rexrs aimed at would-be plantation managers chought noc in terms of distant political horizons but in rerms of rhe reveals deep-rooted rensions over how tea managemenc should Êt i.rto monthly, weekly, ar'd yezrly economic planning and personal discipline politics and over who should occupy managerial positions. I trace these required to advance through the ranls of corporate a¡d social hier- tensions into the presenr through my own ethnographic observadons archies.6 Management training was one step in planning for r-he near of the DTMTC's inauguration, its classes, and-most importantly-a futuraAt rhe DTMTC, icwas ultimately students-nor reachers-who series of charged excha'ges berween DTMTC instrucrors a¡d students. had to reconcile these temporaliries. Maintaining a distincrion berween These in-class debates underscore an abiding concern among the education and polidcs, between the near furure and t.he abstract furure, educared unemployed abou¡ those same quesrions-how managemenr mattered gready to students. The DTMTC, however, was based on a should Êr into politics and who should occupy managerial pori.iorrr. collapse of these very ideas. The students at the DTMTC were born and grew up during the years a C^¿. (21011); Ferguson (1990). 2 Singh (20t5). 5 Guy"' (2007). 3 Snellinger (2006).See 6 also Jedep Jetrery, and Jetrery (2008). SeeJeftey (2010). 202 The Right Kind of Mani Or the Ríght Kind of Trainingi In addition to ds¡¡ils abour the technical challenges oftea planting (from 203 v A cenral jusdÊcation for the founding climate a¡rd altitude, ro soils, to labour costs), rhese texts describe rhe Ø of the DTMTC was the con- t{ qualities of work witü a view to reassuring potential European planr- Êa \s ers, of rhe viabiliry of planting as a career p"th.10 Indeed, the authors ú of these manuals frame the aspirarion to tea plandng almost exclusiveþ \J u) s in rerms of selÊcultivation and individual mobility. Authors address a range of concerns that might be prevenÈing rhe would-be [ea menagers from embarhng on e life in rea. They touch on issues ranging from how s v) to save money for a trip home, to how to read under a mosquito net,ll ro how to burn down a forest to plant tea,12 to which ethnic group's women might make the best nannies.l3 Alexa¡der McGowan, en army surgeon serving in the North-West during rhe mid-1800s, describes the arcractively low amount of up&onr capical expense thet was required for an individual to purchase, clear cut, and seed a tea plantariotr.l4 He porrreys tea plandng as: An employment in itself agresaþle, s¡s¡iling no hard physical labou¡, bur mereþ sufÊcienr exercise for both body and mind as is essential to their hedthy preservatiory and evenrually so lucrarive as to amply repay the anxieties incidental on the earlier years; with a properry safe against the many ills that other crops are liable to, [plandng can allow] ample time for recreation, or even .,.