Roads snaking through green tea plantations and the occasional trundle of a tractor with a load of tea leaves are pictures etched well in the memory of many old timers in the plantation areas of Peerumade and Devikulam taluks.
The upkeep of the estate roads was the onus of the plantation management, which was often done using hand-pulled road rollers known in local parlance as ‘roadurutty’. The workers used to put the machines to work so that the roads, which did not need much maintenance due to very selective traffic, would be fit for the use by the estate team and even by the public.
Working with the road rollers meant having a maintenance system within the plantation itself with a workshop for repair and an oil-storage facility. The estate supervisors would religiously move about in a bike through the roads giving instructions to the workers to correct the flaws of the roads that were the lifelines of the self-sufficient ecosystem that the plantations were.
“The estates had their own hospitals for free treatment of workers, in addition to creche units, schools, grocery shops and well-maintained workers quarters with electricity and water connections,’‘ said Sivaprasad, a former worker at the now-defunct Peerumade Tea Company Ltd.
The machine was thus a staple of plantation life. However, now several such hand-pulled rollers, clocking over a century, are seen abandoned on the road sides in the plantation areas of Peerumade taluk.
Blame this on the times that saw tractors being replaced by mini lorries for transport. The maintenance of the roads then required the paraphernalia of a mechanised road roller, which needed administrative sanction for use. Due to these turn of events, the roads, especially the closed ones in the Peerumade taluk, now flaunt a bad upkeep. “Most of such roads are in the interior areas of the plantations,” said Mohan of Kottamala, who belonged to another closed tea estate in Peerumade.
The crisis that hit the sector two decades ago and the skeletal strength on the estates with many workers migrating to their native places also add to the authorities delaying the maintenance.
Standing mute to such changes as well as the agony of those left behind in the badly kept precincts of the plantations are the age-old hand-pulled road rollers.
