Travancore Labour Association

The Travancore Labour Association, which was established in 1922, was the first labour organisation formed in the princely state of Travancore, which now forms a part of the state of Kerala, India. Centred on the coir industry in the town of Alleppey, it grew from being a body intended to serve the needs of one particular factory to one which represented many workers in what was a substantial business sector in the town. It became notable for its involvement in affairs during the Great Depression and for its politicisation by communist activists.

A facility for the manufacture of woven coir products in Alleppey, a coastal town and the centre for the industry in Travancore, was established by an American, James Darragh, in 1859. Such operations were mostly in the hands of local entrepreneurs of the famous Ezhava caste, who are held in myth to have brought coconut palms to the region from Sri Lanka when they migrated and for whom the tending of those palms was a traditional caste occupation, or avakasam. Export of products, however, was controlled by traders from Europe. The industry grew significantly in the years immediately after World War I, leading to what Robin Jeffrey has described as "a unique dilemma in twentieth-century Kerala: a shortage of labour" and to a significant recruitment campaign. Those who came to work in the industry, which was largely financed by the British and relied more on cottage workers than factory employment,

Those circumstances became poor when financial promises made by those who had recruited them were abandoned from 1931 onwards, with the onset of the Great Depression causing a plummet in the price of coir flooring products and the wages paid to produce them. The economic irony was that employment in the industry grew during this period because demand for simple, cheap floorcoverings increased. Changes in census definitions may affect the enumeration but it seems clear that there had been a disproportionate increase in the number employed in the coir factories of Travancore around this time, with the figure rising from around 7,000 in 1931 to 32,000 a decade later, whilst the cottage worker element grew from 120,000 to 133,000. Although demand for labour increased, the turnover of employees was high and there was a surplus of people looking for work both in the 40 factories of Alleppey and in the numerous small, often short-lived factories that were set up in rural areas around the town. Jeffrey estimates that as many as 50,000 people had been exposed to factory employment by 1939 and

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