["Journal of Agrarian Change, EarlyView. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis article investigates the tea plantation crisis in India through qualitative field research in the Sentinel Rock estate in Wayanad, Kerala. It critically analyses the prevailing studies attributing the crisis to neo‐liberal market dynamics and the experiential consequences of the crisis through the breakdown of moral‐relational structures. By employing Moishe Postone's reading of Marx's critical theory, the study re‐conceptualises crisis as the immanent unfolding of temporal contradiction—the global reconstitution of socially necessary labour time (SNLT) rendered Indian tea estates structurally incapable of conforming to the newly defined global standards of productivity. Jayaseelan Raj's concept of plantation as a total institution provides an experiential dimension through which abstract domination materialises in the everyday lives of estate workers. This article demonstrates that mechanisation emerges as an abstract compulsion inherent in capital's logic rather than a managerial strategy, displacing permanent workers while simultaneously intensifying labour for those who remain. Casualisation of labour and retrenchment of welfare provisions are not simply policy failures, but a structural necessity produced under the treadmill dynamic.\n"]