TEA PRODUCING COMPANIES OF JALPAIGURI 59 TABLE I NUMBER AND IDENTITY OF DIRECTORS OF 16 PUBLIC LIMITED TEA COMPANIES IN JALPAIGURI DISTRICT Tear Number of Number of Community Occupation Companies Directors Bengalee Marwari Pleaders Merchants Jotedar Rest 1940 16 112 106 6 98 6 8 — 1970 16 148 60 88 52 92 — 4 SOURCE: Register of Joint Stock Companies, Calcutta. Note: ^est' includes only Marwari housewives. Jotedar is similar to ^amindar of British Bengal prior to 1953, that is, before the Permanent Settlement was abolished in 1953 by the Estate Acquisition Act. essentially relates to the maintenance and retention of cultivation. The industry being a processing one, manufacturing is elementary. No fundamental change in technology has taken place since its inception and there is little scope for capital deepening or widening. The first is limited by technology, while the second is limited by the scarcity of land. Finally, since the industry is primarily agricultural and manufacturing is secondary to cultivation it has remained a highly labour intensive one. Besides these physical and technological characteristics, the industry has the following economic characteristics. First, the tea plants ing companies have perhaps the lowest capital requirement. Since an initial capital expenditure could create an asset which with the simple maintenance typical of agriculture, yielded returns for sixty to eighty years, the initial capital required no additions through fresh investments for over half a century. As a result, the second and third generations of the pioneer planters have the same set outlook on real assets as their predecessors had. They never felt the urge for building up a reserve out of profits earned to be utilised for reinvestment in the future. Secondly, since the industry is highly labour intensive with each estate maintaining a permanent residential labour force, whose daily wage rate was extremely low, the total wage bill and consequently the cost structure was also low. There were no other benefits or statutory welfare measures for the labourers. Thirdly, excepting a cess on exports and a tax on part of the income from manufacturing (40 percent of the income came under income tax as this was the value added to green leaves by processing which was subject to income tax, the rest being agricultural income) there was no fiscal burden on the plantation sector. Finally, the biggest advantage to the planters was the flexibility in the cost structure of the industry. The plantation industry faced several crises which were due to excess supply. The planters met the crises by restricting the crop. Crop restriction is made by fine plucking which reduces plucking expenses and pushes up price by reducing supply. Such flexibility of costs and