ABSTRACT
Once mobilised from their place to the workplace, which lay spread over vast tracts of hilly area, the large bodies of workers had to be controlled and disciplined. Disciplining of the workforce in the production sites forms the essence of capitalist relations and this discipline is enforced through different means such as technical subordination, supervision and ‘precision’. The adivasi men and other outcaste male workers from the lowlands were put to the work of grounding the forests, preparing the land and planting the seedlings; Dalit women were put to the work of plucking and weeding. Work on the estates was chiefl y manual in nature with a bare minimum of technological intervention, the workers learning their job by doing it; the kanganies or job recruiters often doubled as supervisors, hence the workers’ subordination to the plantation hierarchy commenced with the initial acceptance of the contract. The workers laboured under the hawk-like gaze of the supervisor, the personifi cation of the ‘authority of capital’1 and the performance of each worker was judged in terms of precision:
Time measured and paid must also be a time without impurities or defects, a time of good quality throughout which the body is constantly applied to its exercise. Precision and application are, with regularity, the fundamental virtues of disciplinary time.2
