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118 Sarah Besky trade, namely, the removal of trade barriers, are helping owners compete more effectively; however, in order for a regime of accumulation to succeed , all people must ideologically buy into the system. Darjeeling tea workers are not ideologically entrenched in fair trade. Workers seeking better wages and guarantees of social welfare are still turning to the welfare model developed during the colonial regime of accumulation. They are not petitioning civil society organizations to improve labor conditions ; they are striking against owners and the state. Workers are not only more ideologically tied to the old system; they are nostalgic for it. Recall the vignette with which I opened this chapter. Over white rice, potatoes, and watery lentil soup, we discussed the role of the Joint Body and the endemic corruption on the plantation. Again, the old woman crouched in the corner, without lifting her eyes from her plate, said, “The British time was better.” Town residents and tea workers alike expressed this opinion. Darjeelingers frequently told me that things worked better under colonialism . A Darjeeling schoolteacher even said to me, “I wish that they would just take us over again. . . . We did not have this corruption during the Britishers’ time.” For tea laborers, the colonial regime represented a time when tea production was stable and the labor conditions were favorable. In Darjeeling, the implementation of FLO standards has benefited owners, not workers. Although my work in Darjeeling does not lead me to think that the benefits of fair trade should never be extended to plantations , I do think that fair trade standards should reflect that plantations are hierarchical. This hierarchical structure makes it impossible for resources to be managed “jointly.” Instead, FLO must privilege workers and take measures to prevent owners from manipulating the system for their own benefit. A quick comparison between a fair trade plantation and a conventional one is instructive. During my 2008–2009 fieldwork, I also spent time at Goodricke Company tea plantations in Darjeeling, as well as cinchona plantations across the district. Workers had expansive gardens and ample water supply, active labor unions, food rations, excellent medical facilities, and good housing, all of which are provided to them by plantation management; however, none of the Goodricke tea gardens and cinchona plantations are certified as fair trade. In fact, workers and managers I interviewed were not at all interested in pursuing certification. As Fridell (2007) points out, fair trade, as both a movement and a market, extends the neoliberal economic emphasis on nongovernmental regulation and individual empowerment but also challenges the disenfranchisement that such policies cause. I have tried to use a regulation Colonial Pasts and Fair Trade Futures 119 approach to show how neoliberalization reorients the state toward trade at the expense of social justice and how fair trade tries to correct this. When the Darjeeling tea plantations began seeking certification in the late 1990s, Northern consumers’ enthusiasm for “socially conscious” products combined with plantation owners’ desires to cut costs have inspired Darjeeling gardens to turn to fair trade certification, which has in turn overrun established state apparatuses for regulating workers’ welfare. Focusing on modes of regulation in fair trade agriculture should help scholars studying fair trade in other regions shift their scale of analysis to explore the role of state and nonstate regulatory institutions in protecting workers ’ rights. One possible avenue for improvement is an expansion of FLO and other organizations’ understanding of local legal codes and labor histories , something that social scientists are uniquely positioned to provide. N o t e s 1. This research was supported by a Fulbright Hays Fellowship, an American Institute for Indian Studies Junior Fellowship, and a Scott Kloeck Jenson grant from the Center for Global Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 2. There are five fair-trade-certified producers in Darjeeling: Chamong group, Ambootia group, Tea Promoters of India (TPI), and Makaibari Tea Estate. Each of these, except Makaibari, is a conglomerate. Between them, Chamong, Ambootia, and TPI own over thirty of the eighty-seven gardens of Darjeeling. Makaibari, certified in 1994, is a single estate and heralded by FLO as a model fair trade project (FLO 2005). It became the first plantation of any kind certified by FLO. Over the past fifteen years, many more plantations have become certified. I do not intend this chapter to be an exposé of the practices of Darjeeling plantations, but instead I aim to highlight the difficulties of applying fair trade in hired-labor situations. 3. Change is...

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