The Indian Tea Board's Intervention

The Tea Board has stepped in to resolve the ongoing conflict between the small tea growers and the bought leaf factories.

A meeting has been convened to sort out the serious controversy over price sharing formula suggested by the Union commerce and industry ministry.

At the receiving end in this strife, the small tea growers feel encouraged with the Tea Board’s intervention.

“It is some light at the end of the tunnel. But the conditions can improve only if the Tea Board creates some quality parameter,” the United Forum of Small Tea Growers’ Association secretary Mr Bijoygopal Chakrabarty said.

The bought leaf factories, which are being viewed as the bad boys in the ongoing controversy are equally eager to rectify the situation. “We wish to urge the Tea Board and the small tea growers to ensure supply of quality tea leaf, which would automatically attract decent prices and put to rest the entire controversy,” the North Bengal Tea Producers’ Association president Mr Prabir Seal said.

By the industry’s standards, holdings up to 25 acres under tea are considered small tea plantations. Over 15,000 such holdings have mushroomed in the Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and North Dinajpur districts since 1997 when tea was enjoying a boom period.

The tea glut thereafter violated the basic demand and supply theory and then came the slump. Since then, it has been a struggle for existence for many and a large number of conventional peasants who had taken to tea cultivation in their small holdings were the worst hit.The problem compounded after the emergence of the bought leaf factories, which are primarily manufacturing units without plantations. The BLFs procure their entire raw material from the small growers but the two are always at loggerheads over the price factor.

To erase the problem, the Union commerce and industry ministry fixed a price sharing formula between the BLFs and the small growers.

The allegation from the small growers’ end is that the BLFs do not adhere to the formula. “Instead they dictate their own and since tea is a perishable item, the small growers have to make distress sales at dirtcheap prices,” the UFSTGA secretary said.

“Not always true,” counters the NBTPA president. “There is another side to the story. A number of small growers do not follow the plucking regimen. No one would offer them good price if they do not maintain quality,” he said.

According to him at least 40 percent of the crop supplied should be of a specific standard or the quality of tea suffers, neither would it fetch remunerative prices.

Source> The Statesman