The planter revealed

Planters are supposed to be sitting on considerable wealth in terms of land, but those having liquidity is an exception rather than the rule. The income from sale of rubber sheets is used for his day to day expenses. Once in a while much cash comes into his hands in a very short span of time from the sale of rubber trees which he uses to buy more land now a days mostly in urban area or to build or renovate his bungalow or marry off his daughter or to square up existing loans.

A comparison of the value of plantation land with that of in urban areas will be interesting. If you take the value of one acre (100 cents) of plantation as 20 lakhs (maximum) it will be equivalent of 5 cents in Kottayam, 4 cents in Ernakulam, 3 cents in Chennai, 2 cents in Bangalore and probably 1 cent in Mumbai!

With this post I have come to the end of the "Planter" series.

The present day scenario

In the good old days the children used to be sent to far off boarding schools but now with only one and two per family and to get the boys into professional colleges to make them all the more eligible, as the girls as well as their parents prefer the employed urban settled, these days it has become a common practice for the planters to move out of the plantations and reside in the nearby towns, children’s education being the sole reason..

Social Life.

The down side of plantation life is the nonexistent social life. The estate bunglows are far from each other and the wife of a planter has hardly anything to do except keep the fire in the kitchen burning and the bed warm (pun intended).

Crisis looming large.

The planting community is facing two major crisis one of their own making and the other more imminent, shortage of labour.
None from the present generation of the existing workers, for that matter even the planter’s, follow their parents and the educated youth are not inclined to take up jobs which include manual labour.
The one of their own making is that for various reasons the fraternity does not encourage its own next generation to become a planter. It has reached a stage where a planter is reluctant to give his daughter in marriage to another planter.

Myths & Realities regarding Planters.

Planters lead a relaxed and leisurely life. The one thing they have in plenty is time and not money as others tend to think.

Who is a planter.

Who is a planter? To the uninitiated a planter may be a gardener but reality is far from it. A planter is a person who owns vast areas of land in which any or all of the plantation crops such as Tea, Coffee, Rubber, Cardamom and Cocoa are cultivated. In essence he is a landlord but after feudalism became abhorrent the more civilised word Planter is commonly used.