ASSAM accounted for over half of India’s total 823 million kg of tea produced last year. But the 1.5 billion-dollar-a-year tea industry is tottering for survival following a crash in prices in auctions, besides a slump in exports.

In the weekly auctions, a kilogram of top quality Assam tea was selling at least Rs.15-20 lower than the amount it fetched three years ago. Good quality Assam tea is priced at about Rs.100 a kilo in the retail market. The slump in prices was largely attributed to inferior quality tea being produced by various Indian gardens. “Undoubtedly the crisis hitting the tea industry has been one of the worst in living memory,” said A. Sharma, a senior planter. “The workers have every reason to feel jittery about the future of their children. For centuries, generation after generation of people worked in these gardens.”

Assam’s 800-odd gardens employ an estimated one million workers. The tea planters are clearly worried. “It would be a big blow to the gardens if the next generation shifts their focus away from the plantations to newer vocations,” said Bhabani Baruah, another planter. ”The art of plucking the two leaves and the bud is not easy. It is in their blood. If the workers’ children choose other options, may be in the next decade or so, there will be scarcity of skilled workers.”

Several small gardens have already closed down because of sagging global market and a fall in prices of the beverage. “Who knows what will happen next. The industry seems heading from bad to worse,” said Tularam Tanti, a worker. Assam is the biggest producer of quality tea, contributing anything between 53 per cent and 60 per cent to country’s total tea production. According to Dr. S. K. Bhuyan as per his book “Anglo-Assamese relations; 1771-1826” the tea plant was discovered in 1823 by Robert Bruce, merchant and solider of fortune, during his visit to Rongpur, where he was imprisoned by the Burmese. The discovery of tea plant in Assam enabled the East India Company to develop a trade, which China has hither to monopolised. The Assam company is the oldest commercial tea company of Assam.

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