This book provides a comprehensive socio-economic analysis of India’s four dominant plantation sectors: tea, coffee, rubber and spices. The shift of plantation crops from estate crops to small farm crops has had serious ramifications on input use, productivity, yield and profitability of these crops. As plantation crops increasingly become a source of livelihood for millions of small and marginal growers, new challenges have emerged relating to price volatility, marketing constraints, labour shortages, changing employment relations and climate vulnerability. Bringing together evidence from across India’s plantation economy, the volume analyses these evolving dynamics and offers policy perspectives for revitalising the sector in an increasingly competitive and uncertain global environment.

Topical and accessible, the volume will be indispensable for students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers working in varied fields of agriculture, economics, marketing, human resources, labour studies, gender studies, business, development economics, rural sociology, institutional economics, industrial organisation and South Asian studies.

Vinoj Abraham is Professor at Centre for Development Studies, holding the Ministry of Commerce Chair at Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Kerala. He was awarded PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has been at CDS for the past 20 years, engaging in research, teaching and supervision on gender and development, labour and development, migration, plantation agriculture, technology and innovation. He has been a consultant to The World Bank, The ILO and the Kerala State Planning Board and a member of various expert committees set up by the Government of India and Government of Kerala.