Building a Wider
Horizon With Labour
THE idyllic landscape of the tea gardens popularised by Indian movies and picture postcards hides some harsh realities. Behind the huge swathes of green and the big brands that dominate the Assam tea market lies the story of the small tea growers, a constituency that has not received the kind of attention and representation it deserves. Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Sonitpur, Jorhat, Sibsagar, Golaghat and Nagaon are the seven main tea-cultivating districts in the State. Tea is also grown in Udalguri, Kokrajhar, Chirang and Baksa, the four contiguous districts of the Bodoland Territorial Area District. The area under cultivation by small tea growers is around 2.5 lakh hectares, which accounts for around 33 per cent of the total tea production in the State. It is estimated that nearly 29 per cent of the 1,000 million kilograms of tea produced annually in the country is contributed by the small tea growers of tea-growing States.
