World Bank investment on Assam’s tea plantations: hearing the voices of workers?

By Anirudha Nagar, Accountability Counsel, & Francesca Feruglio, Nazdeek, in openDemocracy

The Assam tea industry produces half of India’s tea and employs nearly 800,000 workers. Just a few companies dominate the landscape, with Tata Global Beverages, McLeod Russel and Unilever especially powerful. Tata own[s] almost half of Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited (APPL), a further 17% of which is owned by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the World Bank’s private sector arm – which invested $7.87 million in the company in 2009. Seven years on, not only has the IFC investment failed to yield meaningful changes for workers, but APPL continues to breach a number of national laws (most notably the Plantations Labour Act, 1951) and is expected to be found in breach of the World Bank’s own standards…

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