AN English lady once called up the Tea Board Office in London and asked for assistance in locating the best Darjeeling tea available in the city. A helpful official agreed to accompany her to a well-known departmental store and select the best of Darjeeling tea. Off they went to the store's tea counter and asked for Darjeeling tea. They were handed a packet, the label on which boldly read: "Darjeeling Tea, Produce of Sri Lanka". Astonished, the Tea Board official pointed out the apparent anomaly. The salesman returned a knowing smile and remarked: "Sir, don't you know the best Darjeeling tea comes from Sri Lanka?"
The anecdote may well be apocryphal but it sums up well the state of the Darjeeling tea industry. Arguably India's best known premium brand (its best quality fetches as high a price as Rs 13,000 a kg), the name is being rampantly misused the world over. Says Ronen Dutta, secretary of the Darjeeling Planters Association (DPA), the apex body of the industry in the West Bengal hills: "The quantity of Darjeeling tea sold worldwide is nearly 45 million kg—four times the actual production of barely 11 million kg that comes from here."
Long before the patenting of basmati became a raging controversy, the Darjeeling tea industry had been facing a similar problem. It did launch a logo in 1986 meant specifically to be used for tea produced in Darjeeling. "But, says Dutta, "so far we did not have any legal means to check or prevent anyone from misusing the Darjeeling brand." That may, however, be changing now.
For one, the DPA has retained the well-known firm Kumaran & Sagar to register the Darjeeling logo under the provisions of trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPs) of the WTO. Once the logo is registered, DPA, in association with the Tea Board, is planning to employ a European firm to institute random checks on various Darjeeling brands of teas sold worldwide and initiate legal action against the offenders. With this move, the Darjeeling tea industry, with an estimated worth of Rs 140 crore, hopes to sell only the genuine brand.
But the industry's problems go beyond the marketing of the brand. Low yields, rising input costs and stagnating production are making the tea business unviable for planters. "The Darjeeling tea industry," says Dutta, "is caught in a vicious circle. It cannot increase production since the market for these high-priced teas is limited. And because production is not increasing, very few gardens can make any operating profit." Dutta, DPA's secretary ever since it was revived in 1984, has a point. The average cost of producing one kg of Darjeeling tea is about Rs 150 whereas the average price this tea fetched at auctions in 1997 was Rs 140. In comparison, the input costs in Assam tea estates is not more than Rs 50 while the average price fetched by the CTC (cut, tear and curl) teas manufactured in Assam is well above Rs 75. And since most Indians prefer strongly boiled tea for which the CTC variety is perfectly suitable, there are few takers for the strong aroma and the light liquor found in the Darjeeling tea.
In fact, the demand for Darjeeling tea went down even as the British left India. Till 1947, when the planters in Darjeeling were British and the consumers too were largely Englishmen, the economic viability of the Darjeeling tea industry, much smaller in size than the one in Assam, was ensured automatically. The departure of the sahibs effected a large-scale decrease in the demand for the brew. And the lack of promotion, coupled with increasing costs and continuing low yield (500 kg per ha as against 1,700 kg in Assam) further crippled the industry after the 1950s. Some two dozen tea estates closed down between 1950 and 1970. Even between 1979 and now, a further 24 gardens have ceased to exist, reducing the total hill area under tea plantation from 20,000 ha to the 17,800 ha at present.
This is because, with profit margins being low, very few companies can afford to uproot ageing bushes and replant new ones. A fact confirmed by R.K. Mody, manager of Warren Tea's Phoobsering Tea Estate. "Replanting new bushes in one ha of land here could cost as high as Rs 2.5 lakh. In plain areas the same work can be done at one-fourth of our cost," he says. Further, while tractors can be employed to plough fields for tea gardens located in the Assam Valley or in the Dooars, the work can be done only manually on the slopes of Darjeeling, thus increasing costs manifold. The hilly terrain also contributes to higher input costs for procuring rations for workers and maintaining supply lines. The transporting of tea from the hills to the warehouses in Calcutta adds up to a substantial fuel bill.
A case made worse by the vagaries of nature. An extended and sustained monsoon this year for instance has led to heavy losses in many gardens. As a whole, DPA member gardens lost planted area of nearly 50 ha due to landslides, leading to a monetary loss of Rs 10.84 crore. Phoobsering, one of the leading gardens in the area, alone lost six ha of land under tea because of landslides. "Apart from the area lost," says Mody, "there are intangible losses due to landslides which cannot be quantified. For instance, when a landslide occurs in a particular area, the workers are wary of working there during heavy rains fearing for their lives. Obviously, we cannot take the risk and so a lot of valuable plucking time is lost in the process." G.C. Somani of Jayashree Tea echoes his sentiments. "This year, the havoc caused by nature has set the industry back quite a bit."
If nature is largely obstructionist, the human factor in the area is no less hostile to their cause. The Gorkhaland agitation in the late eighties has led to a growth in militant unions among workers over the past decade, leading to increased friction between the management and the workers. The situation is confounded further by the multiplicity of these unions. The management is compelled to deal with several leaders, each wanting a separate demand to be fulfilled. Recently several officers of a garden owned by the Jayshree group were even attacked.
So is the future grim for the world's best known brand of tea? Leading planters are wary of making any predictions but attempts are certainly being made to rectify the situation. For instance, a proposal for a development fund to promote Darjeeling tea was mooted early this year. Each member garden was asked to contribute a rupee per kg of tea produced. With an average production of about 10 million kg annually, this could have meant a corpus of Rs 1 crore. The Tea Board was to provide an equivalent grant. It was an ideal concept on paper. But unfortunately, many of the DPA members were reluctant to shell out the money until ultimatums were served. Now, sources say, nearly 90 per cent of the members have paid up, giving the DPA substantial funds to launch a series of programmes to promote Darjeeling tea worldwide.
All is therefore not lost for the world's best brand of tea. Just stir a cuppa and drink on.
