STiR coffee and tea magazine

38 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 2, 2020 (April / May) Bijoy Chakraborty, of the Confederation of Indian Small Tea Growers Association (CISTA), counters the view by proposing a cluster model where STGs form a farmer/ producer company. He thinks that separating the garden and the factory, with work- ers as farmer clusters managing the garden, and garden owners managing the factory presents a viable model. This system, he says, takes away the garden owners' obligation to PLA. But the question that the organized sector has been asking is this: Why are STGs the focus of attention and support when they've been the problem? There is an uneven playing field; STG/BLF and RTGs work almost like two separate industries. RTGs in- sist that the complaint is not just about who will come out standing at the end, because small growers are not profitable either. Jabbar, who is tirelessly working on creating an environmentally sustainable model at Nuxalbari, terms the crisis in Indian agriculture as "criminal." She points out the irony in RTGs being asked to diversify into other crops, while small farmers are being encouraged to grow tea. She states, "I am against farmers leaving food crops to come to tea. Around here [Nuxalbari is in Darjeeling district], in the last sev- en years, huge tracts of lands have been lost to highways, factories, and buildings. Where's our food going to come from?" In Assam, STGs came about when the government needed to rehabilitate surrendered members of the rebel orga- nization, ULFA. Marginalized land was given to them to cultivate tea. It was successful and created wider aspiration among people to become bagan malik or garden owners. In the Nilgiris, STGs came up dur- ing the rupee-rouble trade of the 1980s, which everyone blames for pushing pro- ducers to produce inferior tea. The So- viet Union had a voracious appetite for black teas from India and wasn't picky about quality. The governments incentiv- ized small farmers to switch to tea, and many tea factories giving up orthodox tea production for CTC. The focus was on quantity, and quality took a back seat. When the USSR disbanded in 1991, In- dian tea lost a market, its monopoly, and faced competition from Sri Lanka, Ke- nya, and even Vietnam. In the blame game, it must be noted that Russia has redeemed itself as one of the biggest importers of Indian tea, at 46 million kgs in 2019, only recently losing top spot to Iran. Reducing production, increasing quality, better prices So, not only have STGs caused the glut, induced low prices, and shaken the foun- dation of the industry loose, they also produce not-so-great tea. In 2013, trustea was launched as an India-centric tea certification code for sustainability, whose partners include HUL, TGBL, and Wagh Bakri, the top three tea packers in the country. The onus has been on packers to sell sustain- able tea, and trustea's mandate addresses various sustainability factors, including labor welfare, soil health, and tea produc- tion quality. Says Rajesh Bhuyan, trustea's Director, "HUL and TGBL are moving towards 100% sustainable tea in a year or two." So far, trustea has worked with estates and BLFs to influence change but hopes to move toward retail in 2020. The medical dispensary at Craigmore Estate Credit- Preetam Koilpillai

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