History of tea in India

Commercial production of tea in India began after the conquest of large areas by the British East India Company, at which point large tracts of land were converted for mass tea production. The widespread popularity of tea as a recreational drink began in earnest in the 1920s, after a successful advertising campaign by the Tea Board and several mass promotion drives by the Government, using railway stations as a base.

Today, India is one of the largest tea producers in the world, although over 70 percent of its tea is consumed within India itself. In this, India is also among the top 5 per-capita tea consumers. A number of renowned teas, such as Assam and Darjeeling, also grow exclusively in India. The Indian tea industry has grown to own many global tea brands and has evolved into one of the most technologically equipped tea industries in the world. Tea production, certification, exportation, and all other facets of the tea trade in India is controlled by the Tea Board of India.

History

Chinese varieties of tea were first introduced into India by the British, in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea. The British, "using Chinese seeds, plus Chinese planting and cultivating techniques, launched a tea industry by offering land in Assam to any European who agreed to cultivate tea for export." Maniram Dewan (1806-1858) was the first Indian tea planter, and is credited with establishing the first commercial plantations of the Assamese variety of tea.

Tea was originally only consumed by Anglicized Indians, and it was not until the 1920s (and in rural North India, the 1950s) that tea grew widely popular in India through a successful advertising campaign by the Tea Board. Prior to the British, the plant may have been used for medicinal purposes. Some cite the Sanjeevani tea plant first recorded reference of tea use in India. However, studies have shown that Sanjeevani plant was probably a plant unrelated to the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) and is likely to refer either to Selaginella bryopteris or to Desmotrichum fimbriatum.

In the early 1820s, the British East India Company began large-scale production of tea in Assam, India, of a tea variety traditionally brewed by the Singpho people. In 1826, the British East India Company took over the region from the Ahom kings through the Yandaboo Treaty. In 1837, the first English tea garden was established at Chabua in Upper Assam; in 1840, the Assam Tea Company began the commercial production of tea in the region, run by indentured servitude of the local inhabitants. Beginning in the 1850s, the tea industry rapidly expanded, consuming vast tracts of land for tea plantations. By the turn of the century, Assam became the leading tea producing region in the world.

Writing in The Cambridge World History of Food, Weisburger & Comer write:

"The tea cultivation begun there [India] in the nineteenth century by the British, however, has accelerated to the point that today India is listed as the world's leading producer, its 715,000 tons well ahead of China's 540,000 tons, and of course, the teas of Assam, Ceylon (from the island nation known as Sri Lanka), and Darjeeling are world famous. However, because Indians average half a cup daily on per capita basis, fully 70 percent of India's immense crop is consumed locally."

Modern tea production in India

View of tea plantations in Munnar

Tata Tea Museum in Munnar

India was the top producer of tea for nearly a century, but recently China has overtaken India as the top tea producer due to increased land availability. Indian tea companies have acquired a number of iconic foreign tea enterprises including British brands Tetley and Typhoo.

As of 2013 the consumption of green tea in India was growing by over 50% a year.

The major tea-producing states in India are: Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Sikkim, Nagaland, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Bihar, Orissa.

Government and the Indian tea industry

The Indian tea industry as the second largest employer in the country has enjoyed the attention of the Indian government. When export sales went down, the government has been sympathetic to the demand of the industry and its cultivators. It has passed resolutions supporting the industry domestically and has also lobbied extensively with organizations like the WTO internationally.

The Indian administration along with the European Union and six other countries (Brazil, Chile, Japan, South Korea and Mexico) filed a complaint with the WTO against the Byrd Amendment which was formally known as the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 legislated by the US. The essence of this act was that non-US firms which sell below cost price in the US could be fined and the money is given to the US companies who made the complaint in the first place. The act adversely affected the commodities business of the complainant states and has since been repealed after WTO ruled the act to be illegal.

Furthermore, the Indian government took cognizance of the changed tea and coffee market and set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) to look into their problems in late 2003. The IMC has recommended that the government share the financial burden of plantation industry on account of welfare measures envisaged for plantation workers mandated under the Plantation Labour Act 1951. Moreover, IMC has recommended to introduce means so that the agricultural income tax levied by the state governments can be slashed and the tea industry be made competitive. It has recommended that sick or bankrupt plantation estates should be provided with analogous level of relaxation for similarly placed enterprises/estates as are available to industries referred to BIFR.

A Special Tea Term Loan (STTL) for the tea sector was announced by the Indian government in 2004. It envisaged restructuring of irregular portions of the outstanding term/working capital loans in the tea sector with repayment over five to seven years and a moratorium of one year, which was to be on a case to case basis for large growers. The STTL also provides for working capital up to Rs. 2 lakhs at a rate not exceeding 9% to small growers.

In addition to these measures, the Tea Board plans to launch a new marketing initiative, which will include foray into new markets such as Iran, Pakistan, Vietnam and Egypt. It also plans to renew its efforts in traditional markets like Russia, the UK, Iraq and UAE. Noteworthy is its intent to double tea exports to Pakistan within a year.

Assam Orthodox Tea is set to receive the Geographical Indications (GI) exclusivity. A GI stamp identifies a certain product as emanating from the territory of a WTO member or region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographic origin.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs set up the Special Purpose Tea Fund (SPTF) under the tea Board on December 29, 2006. The aim is to fund replantation and rejuvenation (R&R) programme. In the same year, Tata Tea entered into an agreement to take over Jemca, which controls a 26 percent market share in the Czech Republic.

The CCEA gave its approval for pegging the subsidy at 25 per cent and adoption of a funding pattern of 25 per cent promoter's contribution, 25 per cent subsidy from the government and 50 per cent loan from the SPTF. Banks have also been instructed to increase the lending period to over 13 years.

Beginning in 2013, the Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry has been actively promoting the sale of tea in the country's top five export markets for that product: Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States.

Demand for a Separate Time Zone

Tea gardens in Assam do not follow the Indian Standard Time (IST), which is the time observed throughout India and Sri Lanka. The local time in Assam's tea gardens, known as 'Tea Garden Time' or Bagantime, is an hour ahead of the IST. The system was introduced during British days keeping in mind the early sunrise in this part of the country.

By and large, the system has subsequently been successful in increasing the productivity of tea garden workers as they save on daylight by finishing the work during daytime, and vice versa. Working time for tea labourers in the gardens is generally between 9 a.m. (IST 8 a.m.) to 5 p.m. (IST 4p.m.) It may vary slightly from garden to garden.

Noted film maker Jahnu Barua has been campaigning for a separate time zone for the north east region.

In popular culture

Sagina Mahato, a 1970 Bengali film, directed by Tapan Sinha, deal with labour rights in the tea plantations in the Northeast during the British Raj.

Paradesi (2013 film) (English: Vagabond) is a 2013 Indian Tamil drama film written and directed by Bala[2][3]. The film is based on real life incidents that took place before independence in the 1930s especially in southern tea estates.

See also

• Indian tea culture
• Tocklai Experimental Station
• Indian Tea Association