ABSTRACT
This article examines the processes involved in the emergence, operation and the eventual decline of the indentured labour system in the Assam tea plantations in India in the colonial period. As against the recent revisionist view which justifies the existence of indentured system of supply and employment of labour, it is argued here that the indenture system designed to supply low cost labour to the expanding plantations was wasteful and inimical to the physical reproduction of the labour force. The decline of the indenture system is attributed to the sharpening internal contradictions of the system rather than humanitarian actions on the part of the colonial state.
