Assam Assembly Election 2021: Shaken by COVID-19 pandemic, small tea growers may stir brew in favour of BJP

Gajan Barman is just days away from selling tea from his two gardens in Assam's Dhekiajuli district. For 24 years, he sold raw green leaves to Tulip and Dhekiajuli Tea Estate, two of the largest estates in the district.

But soon, he’ll be making the big shift to directly auctioning tea at the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre.

Barman said that while the cost of production has increased over the years, the price offered by estates has not seen a monumental hike.

“Twenty years ago, our profit margin was four to five rupees ($.069). It’s the same even today,” he said.

Although the sale price of green leaf jumped by almost 45 percent, his costs also increased especially since he could not pick the first flush in March, when the country went into a strict lockdown.

Despite the spread of COVID-19 , the gardens were allowed to partially open after three weeks, which affected his production by 17 percent, which averages 20,000 kgs per hectare.

Now that he’s set up his own manufaturing unit, which cost 1 crore rupees (roughly $13 million), he doesn't have to depend on the tea estates or leaf factories.

“During the season, the estates receive an excess supply of tea leaves and they don’t end up purchasing a bulk of it from us,” said Barman. “But if we don’t pick the leaves on time, we run into losses.”

Gajan Barman hopes to starts directly auctioning made tea from his own manufacturing unit after selling green leaves to estates for 24 years. Images procured by Prakash Bhuyan.

In February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during an election rally in Dhekiajuli, vowed to protect the tea industry from conspiracies by ‘international powers’.

But while the Central government rolled out cash schemes for 7.5 lakh tea garden labourers, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal distributed land titles to only 471 small tea growers.

Hemanta Gohain, the founder of the Small Tea Growers Association in Assam, said that this was merely a token gesture.

“More than 55 to 60 percent of the small tea growers in Tinsukia, where the number of growers is the highest at 40,000, do not have land titles,” he said. “What is 471 in comparison to that?”

Without land titles, Gohain added, the tea growers can’t apply for bank loans or form cooperatives to manufacture their own tea.

India is only second to China in global tea production, of which Assam contributes the largest share with a Geographical Index tag unlike any other state in the country. In 2019-20, Assam contributed almost 53 percent ie it produced 716.49 million kilograms of the total 1,360 million kilograms in the country.

A large part of its growing share in production is attributed to the rise of small tea growers (who number around 1.70 lakh) comprise 50 percent of the state producers.

“The Tea Board of India has given us subsidies in the last few years,” said Barman, who used the 4.25 hectares of his father’s land that was earlier used to cultivate jute. Moreover, he added, encouraging small tea growers helps in solving the unemployment crisis.

Dipankar Mukherjee, the executive director of the Assam branch of Tea Board of India, said that they’ve been encouraging small tea growers to set up their own factories.

“We’re telling them to get together and start a factory rather than just supplying green leaf. If they can maintain the quality of the tea leaves they’ll do it better and if they manufacture, then there’s every possibility of getting better prices,” he said.

Tea labourers wrapping up for the day at a Dhekiajuli estate. Images procured by Prakash Bhuyan.

In 2016, Kulajit Nath, who owns about eight hectares of tea plantation, teamed up with Raja Saha and set up a small manufacturing unit in the backyard of his home in Dhekiajuli town. Built entirely under their personal supervision, the two manufactured handmade tea entirely without any labour for three years.

However, they added, that both marketing and sales remain a challenge in a market completely monopolised by players such as Tata and Unilever.

“Although the Tea Board helped me with a subsidy of 17,000 rupees per hectare, they still haven’t given us a licence to sell at the GTAC,” Nath said.

Based on a notification by the Tea Board of India, the duo ticked the ‘Board of Growers’ category to register themselves as sellers. “The Guwahati office had approve it but the Kolkata branch told us to go for the Individual Growers category (upto 66 hectares of plantation),” said Saha. Refusing to be identified as an individual grower, they stormed out of the office.

Saha believes that the network of big estates and the Tea Board want to limit the competition from small tea growers because a limited quantity of handmade tea will put them out of business.

The big estate owners, on the other hand, claim that the unchecked growth of small tea growers has adversely affected the quality of tea being produced.

“These gardens are abundantly growing tea and selling whatever leaf at throwaway prices to the bought leaf factories,” said an industry source, who asked not to be identified. “In this process, the quality of tea gets compromised”

Moreover, he added, many of these gardens have encroached on reserve forest land that the government has allowed, unabated.

Although overall tea production in Assam was down by 13.7 percent last year, the cost of tea saw a quantam leap by 28.2 percent.

The price of CTC (crush tea curl) auctioned last year went up to a record Rs 293 per kg and a new record of specialty tea sold at 75,000 rupees per kg. Specialty tea, or handmade tea, is typically produced by small tea growers in smaller quantities that goes up to five kg.

Despite small tea growers providing jobs to seven lakh workers, Gohain said that apart from the subsidies that were offered six years ago, the government has not offered any special schemes for them.

“The problem is that small tea growers are not organised. We don’t have any unity to put forth our collective demands,” he added, but remained evasive about how this could influence their votes this election.

Despite the unseamless transition, both Nath and Saha said that the only future for small tea growers is in manufacturing.

“But unless we’re allowed to auction, only then can we build a brand,” said Saha.

After all, they added, it’s the specialty tea from Assam that put the state on the global map.