It's no longer the brown sahib's preserve. The Assamese are finally moving into tea.
MORAN is a small township in upper Assam's Dibrugarh district, a mere dot on National Highway 37. Today, it is better described as the nerve-centre of an emerging trend in tea cultivation that is transforming ordinary, hardworking people into lakhpatis and creating job avenues for thousands of others.
Only a decade ago, Lekhak Koch used to move around on a rickety bicycle, doing odd jobs. Today, he is a proud owner of several four-wheelers, among them a Tata Sumo, a brand new Mahindra Classic and a Maruti car. Or, take Dilip Saikia. Or Pradeep Khatniar. In 1985, Khatniar used to sell vegetables in the local market, act as a go-between in cattle deals and do, like Koch, sundry other jobs. Thirteen years later, Khatniar admits to making a cool Rs 8 to 10 lakh a year from selling green tea leaves.
Koch and Khatniar belong to the 15,000-strong (and growing) community of successful and diligent small tea-growers who have not only upgraded their lifestyle but provided jobs to another 1,50,000 in a chronically unemployment-ridden state. Thanks to their success, scores of young people in the upper Assam districts of Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Sibsagar and Golaghat are turning away from traditional jobs and taking up tea cultivation for an assured income.
The tea business is lucrative, even encouraging unscrupulous traders to masquerade as small growers (see box). But the fact remains that the abundance of small tea-growers over the past decade has also helped bring the tea industry closer to the indigenous Assamese. Says Pradip Bhattacharjee, long-serving secretary of the Assam Branch of Indian Tea Association (ABITA): "The emerging segment of small tea-growers will, in the long run, contribute a large chunk of tea produced in Assam."
Who exactly is a small tea-grower? Currently, anybody cultivating tea on a land holding of less than 250 bighas (one bigha in Assam is equal to 14,400 sq ft) is considered a small tea-grower. Among the small tea-growers however, land holdings are known to be as small as 10 bighas. The All Assam Small Tea Growers Association estimates that small tea-growers are producing over 65 million kg of green leaf. That makes nearly 14 million kg of tea, while the total production in Assam is over 345 million kg.
The money comes easy too. Anyone who can produce one lakh kg of green leaf annually (for which you need 50 bighas of land) can easily expect to make a profit of Rs 5 lakh a year. By 2002, small tea-growers are expected to contribute over 100 million kg of green leaf, a substantial growth in 24 years. Consequently, in another four years, Assam can expect at least 10,000 lakhpatis like Koch and Khatniar.
The story of Koch, whose meteoric rise has inspired at least 100 educated unemployeds in Rajgarh-Moran area to take up tea cultivation, is worth telling particularly because he has had very little formal training. After graduating in 1976, Koch got a job as trainee in nearby Halmari Tea Estate. Says he: "I was lucky to meet a man called C.K. Parasher, then manager of Halmari. Within a year, he taught me the basics of tea cultivation. Although he could not give me a regular job, Parasher sent me to two-three other companies with a very strong recommendation. But I decided to strike out on my own. I came back home and started a tea nursery on a small patch of land that my father had. It was a big success and the earnings from it allowed me to purchase five bighas in 1988 where I planted tea."
Over the next decade, those five bighas multiplied into a thriving business of over 500 bighas owned and managed by Koch's brothers, wife and other relatives. Their combined annual turnover: Rs 1 crore. The man who could barely manage two square meals a day for his family a decade ago can today afford to send his 17-year-old son to Kota in Rajasthan for a year for an IIT entrance course. "Today," says Koch, "tea cultivation is an easy business but 10 years ago, when I took the plunge, I was branded a mad man. I'm happy that at least 100 others in my locality have followed my lead. In the process, a big transformation has taken place in the way people live and lead their lives."
Ujjwal Baruah from Moran, who runs a business in Guwahati, agrees. "No one in the area now looks for a job. Every conceivable vacant piece of land is taken up for tea cultivation. People are even planting tea in their backyard. It's understandable. Everybody wants to emulate Koch and Khatniar."
Travelling the same road, Pradeep Khatniar came to tea cultivation from vegetable vending. Motivated by a senior businessman, Khatniar started by planting tea on three bighas of family land. With the experiment yielding unexpected gains, he expanded his business. Today, he grows tea on 180 bighas of land. Production last year was 3.2 lakh kg of green leaf. This year's target: 4 lakh kg. Last year's profit: Rs 8 lakh. Sitting in front of the new house he's getting constructed, Khatniar says with obvious pride: "I can look back with satisfaction and say that I have been able to look after my family well."
Indeed, in this strife-torn state with few business opportunities, tea has been a great leveller. The Englishmen and their successors, also called the brown sahibs, may have kept the natives out of the tea business for a long time. But a century-and-a-half later, they are finally beginning to get even.