Something surprising happened during an experiment to empower workers at Thenmallay, a tea plantation nestled on a misty plateau between the heavy monsoons of eastern Kerala and the drier uplands of Tamil Nadu in south India.

When Tata Tea, the then owner, withdrew its managers from the plantation in April 2004 and told the 600-odd pluckers to manage the estate themselves, productivity plummeted. After three months, the pilot project was pronounced a disaster. "The drive and efficiency that had made Thenmallay our most productive tea garden suddenly vanished," says Chacko Thomas, a former field manager at Thenmallay, part of Tata Tea's largest estate in south India.