STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: The green tea leaves entering Assam from Arunachal Pradesh have made the small tea growers in the Tinsukia district suffer loss, and the Assam tea brand suffers its quality.
The All Assam Small Tea Growers’ Association (AASTGA), Tinsukia District Committee, has raised the demand for banning the entry of green tea leaves into Assam.
Addressing the media in Guwahati today, AASTGA’s Tinsukia district committee secretary Ajit Gogoi and convener of the agitation Bikram Borgohain gave a picture of the situation that the small tea growers of the Tinsukia district and the rest of the state have been facing.
Bikram Borgohain, who is spearheading the agitation for the interest of the local small tea growers, said, “The Tinsukia district has around 56,000 local small tea growers carrying out tea plantations in around 3.82 lakh bighas of land. The local growers do not get prices, which the district-level monitoring committee has set, from the bought-leaf factories. To cap it all, low-quality green tea leaves keep entering Assam from Arunachal Pradesh through six inter-state border gates. Since the green leaves from the neighbouring state are of low quality, the bought leaf factories buy them at lower rates, depriving the local growers. This precarious situation has led some of the small tea growers in the Tinsukia district to sell their green tea leaves to the bought-leaf factories in the Dibrugarh district. Most of the owners of bought-leaf factories in the Tinsukia district are not from the mainstream population of Assam. They have engaged some middlemen to take land on lease in Arunachal Pradesh and grow tea. This practice has spelled disaster for the small tea growers in the Tinsukia district. We have staged a protest in this regard recently with the participation of around 5,000 people. We submitted our memorandum to the Chief Minister through the local circle officer on that day”.
Borgohain further said, “According to the information we have, tea is grown on 1.5 lakh bighas of land in Arunachal Pradesh. The tea from Arunachal Pradesh has no brand of its own. They sell their green tea leaves to Assam’s bought-leaf factories that blend those low-quality tea leaves with the Assam tea, lowering its quality. The small tea growers of the Tinsukia district are in such distress that it makes them contemplate withdrawing themselves from the tea venture at a time when Assam is celebrating 200 years of tea.”
Requesting the Chief Minister, Borgohain said, “If the chief minister is committed to the interests of the small tea growers of the state, he should take steps to stop the entry of green tea leaves into Assam from Arunachal Pradesh. He needs to hold necessary talks with his Arunachal Pradesh counterparts. The government should not make us take to the streets.”
The small tea growers alleged that, like the present government, the previous governments in the state also had understandings with bought-leaf factories, leading to the denial of remunerative prices of green tea leaves to the indigenous small tea growers. “Now the cost of production of green leaves is around Rs 24.35 per kg, but the small growers in the Tinsukia district get Rs 16 per kg on average,” Borgohain said.
Tinsukia district secretary Ajit Gogoi raised the demand for bringing green tea leaves under the Minimum Support Price Guarantee Act, as the small tea growers only cultivate tea but have no factories.
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