Tea Planters in Assam may find problem
Source: Hueiyen News Service / Newmai News Network

Guwahati, April 25 2012: Tea planters in Assam may find problem to enjoy the developmental schemes under Tea Board of India.

According to sources, the tea planters in Assam are 'landless'.

However, these landless tea planters plant tea on acres after acres of land provided by the government.

Roughly 75,000 small tea growers in Assam are not eligible for the developmental schemes under the Tea Board of India as they do not possess land ownership documents despite having been allowed to cultivate on government land for years.

Executive director of Tea Board for the Northeast, Mr Rakesh Saini said while there are some 80,000 small tea growers in Assam, only 5,000 of them have been able to register themselves with the Board and take advantage of various benefits.

"A tea grower has to produce several documents including land ownership papers in order to register with us and avail the benefits of our schemes.

But with the majority of growers continuously deprived, the Board has now relaxed the procedure and has started accepting revenue payment receipts against government land too," Saini said.

The small tea farms in Assam cover about 1.20 lakh hectares of land - mostly government fallow land - and contribute up to 28% of the state's tea output.

Assam alone produces more than 50% of India's tea.

Small size of land holdings is also responsible for farmers getting deprived of certain Tea Board schemes, Saini said.

"While it requires not less than 0.1 hectare for a tea farm to become viable, people are growing tea even in smaller plots in their homesteads.

This makes it difficult for the Board to cover them under various schemes," he said.

With this problem in view, the Tea Board has now also come out with a scheme to encourage small tea growers to form self-help groups among themselves.

"This will help them avail the schemes as well as cut down transportation and other costs.

Moreover, they will also have a collective power to bargain for better prices from the factories and bigger gardens that buy green leaf," Saini said.

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