NEWSLINKS
INDIA & THE WTO
NEW GOVERNMENT
COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES
SEARCH REDIFF

The Rediff Business Special/Nitin Gogoi

The unemployed in Assam don't seek jobs, they get into tea biz

Moran was a small township in upper Assam's Dibrugarh district, a mere dot on the National Highway 37. Today, it is the nervecentre of new age tea cultivation that is churning millionaires out of seemingly ordinary but hardworking people.

Take Lekhak Koch, for instance. Only a decade ago, he 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 consider Pradeep Khatniar's story. In 1985, he used to sell vegetables in the local market, act as a go-between in cattle deals and do whatever odd job came his way. Thirteen years later, Khatniar, by his own admission makes about Rs 1 million a year from selling green tea leaf.

Koch and Khatniar are but two examples of some 15,000 such successful small tea growers concentrated mainly in upper Assam districts of Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Sibsagar and Golaghat. Silently and with diligence, people like Koch, Khatniar and several others have upgraded their own lifestyles and in the process created a new avenue for self-employment in a state afflicted with severe unemployment. The 15,000-odd small tea growers have themselves provided jobs to another 150,000 workers.

Indeed, in upper Assam, scores of young people who would otherwise have searched for a traditional job, are now turning to tea cultivation since it provides an assured annual income. The new trend, of course, has its downside; but then, the growth of small tea growers over the past decade has also helped bring the tea industry closer to the indigenous Assamese. As Pradip Bhattacharjee, long-serving secretary and now advisor of the Assam Branch of Indian Tea Association or ABITA observers: "The emerging segment of small tea growers will, in the long run, contribute a large chunk of tea produced in Assam."

Who is a 'small tea-grower'? Under the current rule, anybody cultivating tea on a land holding of less than 250 bighas (one bigha = 14,400 square foot) is considered a small tea-grower. Among the small tea-growers, however, the land holdings are known to be as small as 10 bighas.

According to the All Assam Small Tea Growers' Association, the small tea growers are coproducing over 65 million kilograms of green leaf which translates to nearly14 million kg of made tea out of a total Assam production of over 345 million kg. And anyone who can produce 100,000 kg of green leaf annually (for which you need 50 bighas of land) can easily expect to make a neat Rs 500,000 a year.

By 2002, the small tea growers are expected to contribute over 100 million kg of green leaf, a substantial growth for this sector from its humble beginning in 1978. Thus, in another four years, Assam can reasonably expect to see the emergence of at least 10,000 lakhpatis (lakh = Rs 100,000; lakhpati = a person who has Rs 1 lakh) like Koch and Khatniar.

Koch's meteoric rise has in fact inspired at least 100 other educated unemployed youth in Rajgarh-Moran area to take up tea cultivation seriously.

His success is worth recounting particularly because he has had very little formal training. After barely graduating in 1976, Koch went looking for a job and got one as a trainee in nearby Halmari Tea Estate. It is interesting to hear the beginning of the Koch Success Story in his own words: "I was lucky to meet a man called CK Parasher, who was then the 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 don't know what came over me when I decided that I will be on my own. I came back home and decided to begin a tea nursery on a small patch of land that my father had. The nursery was a big success. The earnings from there allowed me to purchase five bighas of land in 1988 where I planted tea.

Those five bighas have proved to be the foundation for a little empire spread over 500 bighas of the Koch family. Their combined annual turnover is Rs 10 million. 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 stay in far-away Kota for a year to take entrance test coaching for admission into the Indian Institute of Technology.

"Today," says Koch, "it may look very easy for everyone to cultivate tea but when I took the decision, I was branded a mad man. Of course, I've the satisfaction that at least 100 others in my locality have followed my lead and taken to tea cultivation. In the process, a big transformation has taken place in the way people live and lead their lives."

As Ujjwal Baruah, a businessman in Guwahati who belongs to Moran, says: "No one in the area now looks for a job. Every conceivable vacant piece of land is taken up for tea cultivation. People have even started planting tea in their own backyard. They cannot be blamed. When they see success stories like Koch, Khatniar or a host of others, everyone wants to emulate them."

If Koch's is an inspiring story, Khatniar's is no less. A vegetable vendor till 1985, Khatniar was told about the potential of tea cultivation by an elderly businessman in the area.

As an experiment, he planted tea on three bighas of family land. Having earned a good profit in his first venture, he proceeded to buy more land. Today, he has tea plants on 180 bighas of land!

His production last year was 320,000 kg of green leaf. This year's target: 400,000 kg. Last year's profits: Rs 800,000. "I can look back with satisfaction and say that I have been able to look after my family well," Khatniar says with obvious pride sitting in front of his new house under construction.

Tea cultivation has become a lucrative profession in a state that has very few business opportunities. The Englishmen and then their successors, often derisively referred to as brown sahibs, may have kept the locals out of tea business for a long time but the natives are getting one back on the sahibs, albeit a century-and-a-half too late. BOX

Small tea-growers' emergence brings theft problems to big gardens

Specials

Business

Assam