Bengal entrepreneurs look at tea production as a source of income

The humble green leaf, the source of our daily morning cuppa, is changing the lives of many in towns of North Bengal. Forty-year old Dilip Das, for instance, a resident of Puratupara village of Jalpaiguri district of North Bengal, has shifted from his mud-thatched hut to a one-storied pucca house. A school dropout, Das had never dreamt of living in a pucca house even a few years ago till he took up tea production in his family-owned land sometime around 2008.

Today, he owns 8 acres of land and earns around Rs 35,000 per year from green leaf production. His two children go to school and he wants to give them good education. In Bahadurg ram village of Jalpaiguri, 42-year-old Ranjit Dutta, a primary school teacher at the local Jahuri school, has also taken up green leaf production as an "alternative source of income".

Dutta says that he is earning Rs 10,000 extra per month from it which is helping him repay the Rs 10 lakh housing loan he had taken last year. Das and Datta belong to the new breed of first-generation entrepreneurs in North Bengal who have taken up green leaf production to earn a living. There are 30,000 such small tea growers in that area whose total production is around 91 million kg, which is almost 32.5% of north Bengal's tea production of 280 million kg.

India's total tea production is 980 million kg. Interestingly, nearly 80% of these first-generation entrepreneurs have come from rural areas and 95% of them are Bengalis. "North Bengal University had carried out a survey of these growers and it was found that 95% of them have got basic education up to secondary level. Some are even graduates who have consciously entered into tea production to avoid unemployment. The age of these entrepreneurs ranges between 35 - 50 years," says Bijoy Gopal Chakroborty, president of Confederation of Indian Small Tea Growers Association (CISTA).

These growers are largely concentrated in north Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar and at the foothills of Darjeeling. "In 2004, the total production of these tea growers was around 41 million kg which has now shot up to 91 million kg, and is going up every day as more and more people are joining the green leaf cultivation."

The reason for this sudden spurt in numbers is largely due to appreciation in tea prices year-on-year basis. Says Sarat Roy, a small tea grower in Coochbehar district: "We sell green leaves to bought-leaf factories which process and sell them to big companies. Sometimes, we sell them to big tea companies like Goodricke, Jay Shree Tea and others directly. Green leaf price, says an estimate, has appreciated by 10%-15% over the past four years."

Incidentally, bought-leaf factories are units that buy these leaves and convert them into the tea we drink. Generally, 6000 tea bushes can be planted in an acre of plot. These 6,000 bushes can produce 10,000 kg of green leaf. The cost of production varies between Rs 8.50-Rs 10.50 per kg. The producer gets Rs 13.50 per kg.

"So his net earning is Rs 3 per kg. The more he produces, the more is his return," says Mr Chakroborty. These growers are now forming self help groups and later co-operative societies to set up their own bought-leaf factories to ensure higher price for their produce.