Recently, my friend, Kavi Seneviratne,  formerly  Managing Director of Kelani Valley Plantations and, subsequently,  Managing Director of Hayleys Global Beverages, very generously gifted to  Dilmah, a set of old books on a wide range of aspects of the Plantation Industry. Amongst them was a tattered foolscap book with the spine exposed, the pages barely held together with disintegrating string and flaking glue, brown with age.

The printed publications dealt with a variety of subjects, authored by specialists in respective disciplines; technical, authoritative and as such treatises tend to be, at times both highly theoretical and pontifical. The foolscap book was, despite addressing similar issues related to Tea planting,    a complete contrast in content.  It contained the personal observations of a working plantation manager, converting the theories behind a multitude of everyday work practices on an estate, into actions of implementable dimensions.

This book had been maintained, in his own neat  handwriting on every single page,  by Mr. David Perkins, from  the early 19 fifties , when he was manager of Gampaha estate, Udapussellawa, till his retirement in 1964, from Brunswick estate, Maskeliya, when he had handed over the diary to his successor, Duncan Hermon. The latter, who retired in 1971, had presented the book to Kavi, then Assistant Manager on Brunswick. Incidentally, Kavi had been trained by Hermon on Brunswick itself.

Plantation management styles, and strategies, have undergone tremendous changes since Perkins’s day. His was an era when one developed one’s own strategy, method and style, and imposed it on the property in your custody.  Whilst the lessons of history and those passed on by predecessors played a part,  Individual prejudices, likes, dislikes and preferences also converged in determining the type of management one decided to implement. Clearly reflected in the management style were the manager’s personality traits.

Today’s plantation manager has, at his call, resources of technical and experimental knowledge, of a magnitude undreamt of by the plantation manager of Perkins’s time. His was an era when working planters unearthed much of the knowledge that they needed on a daily basis, at their own expense, on their own time, through a process of trial and error. It was also an era when a good plantation manager did not take anything for granted, even when information was handed down by a specialist when the working planter tested that theoretical knowledge for proof under actual working conditions and adapted it for use as he considered best. The good and conscientious plantation manager did not delegate these tasks to a subordinate; he did it personally and held himself responsible for the results he obtained.

Our is an era when every management action has a label, when every strategy is formalized and the science of management has a specialist for every facet. Accredited educational institutions award diplomas in plantation management, equivalent to a university degree,  at the culmination of exhaustive study programmes.  However, the practices that produce the tea that we market have not changed significantly in 150 years and, in all sincerity, it cannot be said that the new sophistication introduced to plantation management over time, have improved either the product or the plantation, proportionately. We are simply producing larger quantities of the same black tea.

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