Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The small tea growers of all the tea-growing northeastern states moved Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the plea to ensure an MSP (minimum support price) for green leaf like other agricultural crops. Earlier, the small tea growers of Assam had repeatedly urged the Union Ministry of Industries and Commerce, the Tea Board of India and the Assam government to announce MSP for green leaf, but to no avail.
The small tea growers produce around 48 per cent of the total green tea production in Assam. Despite this, they have to cry out for remunerative prices of green leaf from the bought tea factories.
The Northeast Confederation of Small Tea Growers' Association requested the Prime Minister in a memorandum to introduce a mechanism for a fair and remunerative price of green leaf to protect the small tea growers from the market price volatility. The association said, "MSP is applicable to 22 agricultural crops and is a price guarantee set by the government to protect farmers from price drops in the open market, thereby ensuring a fair price to farmers for their produce. Tea is half agriculture and half industry. Small tea growers are engaged in the cultivation and harvesting of tea leaves, which is a form of agriculture or farming. We, therefore, earnestly request you to introduce MSP, or a fair and remunerative price, for green leaf produced by small tea growers."
The association further said, "The present price-sharing formula or declaration of average green leaf price district-wise and month-wise by the Tea Board is not helping the tea growers; rather, it is creating a rift between tea growers and tea manufacturers."
The association requested the Prime Minister to extend all schemes under the Ministry of Agriculture to the small tea growers, as they need more support from the government in providing plucking machines, pruning machines, fencing and irrigation.
Though every district in Assam has a price monitoring committee to fix prices of green tea leaves after holding meetings with the stakeholders, in many districts such meetings are not held in time. A section of bought leaf factories, on the other hand, does not follow the prices fixed at the meetings. In such a situation, small tea growers sell green leaf at such prices that they do not even cover their cost of production.
This is an open question as to why the state government does not give importance to protecting the interest of around two lakh Assamese youths engaged in growing tea in the state.
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