• Q|A Supriya Sahu

    A money-losing federation of small grower co-operatives in Tamil Nadu, the largest of its kind in India with a history dating to 1965, languished for decades before Supriya Sahu emerged as a leader with a singular message: produce tea that builds the lives of farmers and a better future. “That’s our ambition, to transform an organization that was a sleeping giant into one that can show the world that a small growers’ organization can be the best among the best,” she says.

    Supriya Sahu, managing director of INDCOSERVE in Tamil Nadu
    Tasting Room
    Tea tasting at INDCOSERVE

    Awakening a Sleeping Giant

    Supriya Sahu arrived in the Nilgiris in 2019 to head INDCOSERVE, a cooperative of tea farmers started by the government of Tamil Nadu. In less than two years, she has turned this 55-year-old loss-making cooperative into a profitable one. INDCOSERVE’s 30,000 small farmers and 16 tea factories produce 14 million kilos per year, with a newly launched retail range. We talk to Sahu about how she has pulled this ambitious and audacious plan that can well serve as a blueprint for small growers across the country.

    Aravinda Anantharaman: This is your second deputation in the Nilgiris. When was the first one? And how did the second one come about? What did you do between these two deputations to the Nilgiris?

    Spuriya Sahu: The first one was 20 years back, between 1999-2002, when I was posted as the Collector of the district. I worked for the government of India for almost 10 years. I worked mostly in the ministry of information and broadcasting where I looked after the policy aspects of broadcasting, basically the licensing of the television channels and community radio and content regulation on television channels, et cetera. Those were my earlier assignments. After that, I was posted as Director General, Doordarshan. After competing 10 years, it was time to do something at the grassroots. Tamil Nadu government was kind enough to post me here because there was an opportunity to work with the farmers. So having worked at the policy level for a very long time, I think it was very important, interesting to touch base with the ground reality to see what’s happening in the field.

    Aravinda: When you took over managing INDCOSERVE, where was it at? What did you inherit?

    Supriya: Basically it’s like a sleeping giant. That’s what I’m telling my team all the time. That it is like a sleeping giant and we are awakening it slowly. It has a huge potential and it could be a game changer in the tea industry. I am saying this because of many reasons.

    One, I think our greatest strength is that we are a cooperative. It is a democratically elected institution. INDCOSERVE is not headed by officers, but by farmers themselves. How many organisations can boast of that? The chairman of INDCOSERVE is a small farmer himself. We have 16 factories. Each factory has a board and the board is headed by a small farmer. How does it help? It helps because then they have a direct role to play in whatever they do. Almost all these small growers have been with us for more than 20 years, 30 years; we are doing enrolment of new members, which is a continuous process.

    If profitable, as a very large player in the sector, we can be a game changer for the tea industry. Because we can set standards and benchmark us, which we were not doing earlier. With all due respect to my colleagues before me, I think most of them were holding the position as an additional charge. They were managing it remotely, sitting at Chennai or elsewhere. You did not have such a senior officer managing it from the headquarters. And that makes a lot of difference because you are there 24 by 7 to handle the affairs of the institution.

    Aravinda: How is INDCOSERVE set up?

    Supriya: It’s a cooperative federation. There are 16 factories affiliated to us. INDCOSERVE was set up by the government in 1965. Then the first factory was inaugurated at Kundah. Over a period of time, several factories have come up. We have about 30,000 members, 30,000 small tea growers who are members. That makes us one of the largest tea co-operative federations in Asia. And of course the largest cooperative federation in India. Because you have the bought leaf factories, you have STGs.

    If you look at the North Indian tea sector, it’s mostly estates. There are some small growers also, but they are not affiliated in a cooperative structure. Whereas in South India, it is mostly the bought leaf structure, but like a federation people coming together, working for themselves, this may be the only one in the country.

    Aravinda: The cooperative model is challenging. What were INDCOSERVE’s challenges?

    Supriya: We had several brainstorming sessions with our small growers. I also started something called open house where every Monday, any small grower can drop in here.I wrote about 30,000 letters to small growers, saying that I’m here to serve you. Here is the number to my office, my office address, my email. Please tell me what shall we do. That letter was also very emotional because I also wrote to them as the previous district collector who served them 20 years back. I have that connection with the people of this district.

    We had several rounds of discussions in the field, and then we identified several challenges, which we have documented. The most important challenge was that INDCOSERVE could never emphasise on quality of our teas. We were not even known. Nobody knew about INDCOSERVE as a brand, as an entity.

    Now maintaining quality of tea leaves is a biggest challenge because we are not like a big estate where people can just ask their labourers to pick two leaves and one bud. Here, farmers just pick the leaves and bring it to us. We did not have leaf supervision standards in the factories. That was the biggest challenge we identified. But then, how do you make sure that 30,000 farmers understand how important is the quality of leaves? How do we make them understand that the quality of the leaf has a repercussion on the quality of the tea that we make.

    We did several demonstrations telling our farmers that when you bring this kind of a leaf, this is the tea you produce. We launched something called as a mission quality, which was at three levels: what we will do at the INDCOSERVE level, the factory level and the grower level.

    We started from the grower level. We have about 200 leaf supervisors. They are the people from the community, about 20-30 of them with each factory. Their job is to collect the leaf from the growers bring it to a collection centre, or the grower brings it to the collection centre. The transportation vehicle brings it to the factory. We trained all our leaf supervisors. That was the most critical because whenever a farmer brought the leaves, they were able to demonstrate, that you give this leaf, this is what we will produce. I would say about 55% to 60% of the leaf quality has improved dramatically, thanks to this kind of an interaction which we did at the grower level.

    Then we also had several hours of meetings where we trained small grower representatives. One interesting thing in the Nilgiris, here the Badaga community, who cultivate land, who are the main supplier of tea, is a very cohesive, a very tight knit community. In fact, the entire village is like a family. If they see a value, they will tell everybody in their community to follow it. It’s a discipline, it’s coming together, it’s a team work. So that really helped us.

    At the factory level, they did not have any standard operating procedures at all, no SOPs were in place. We consulted private bought leaf factories. We consulted some private estates like Chamraj. We learned, we went to them, we took our teams to see how a private sector company operates. And it was a huge learning. We took our MDs, we took our Chairman … it was an eye opener. Because they saw that the factories were so clean, so hygienic, so well maintained; packaging was so good, marketing was fantastic. They felt we can do it. So we introduced SOPs, we introduced monitoring of the liquor, we appointed quality officers. We appointed a Chief Quality Officer at the INDCOSERVE level. And at the factory level, we appointed five quality officers monitoring the quality of teas across the factories. They’re all experienced people who have worked in the private sector for a very long time.

    At INDCOSERVE level, we have introduced a weekly and a weekly internal certificate mechanism. We give an internal certificate with quality grades. There is a healthy competition to get the A quality, because we have told them that those who will get the maximum number of these certificates will be eligible for an annual award. We are introducing an award system to incentivise the factories, as well as the MDs.

    These were the major things that we introduced as far as the quality, but then I can go on talking about it because there are many things that we did, in marketing, in building a brand and things like that.

    Aravinda: Just to go back a bit, when you wrote those 30,000 letters, did you get responses from the people?

    Supriya: Many people did. About 35 or 37 called me to say, you have to do this, our factory is not operating at the optimum capacity. Their feedback was so good, so precise. They knew what was happening in the machinery. Many people also said that the tea maker was not good, or that the staff were not paying attention.

    They also had an issue with non settlement of their dues. In fact, that was another major reform, We were not announcing the base price of the green leaf, which means if I am a farmer, I won’t know much money I will be paid upfront. We started announcing the price on first of every month. The farmer knew if I supply my leaf, I will get this. He or she was able to compare it with the private factory.

    We were paying much less than the price determined by the tea board of India. That was not instilling the confidence. I think most of the grievances were attached to this, that they were not getting the base price determined by the Board.

    Many of my factories were making a loss. We took a calculated risk in ensuring that we give the price determined by the board, to be on the right side of the law, and because it’s their right. I’m still happy to say in the last one year, except maybe for two months, we have been able to pay either the tea board rate or above.

    We got more leaf. We’ve been able to operate our factories at an optimum level. It built the confidence of growers in the organization.

    Kattabettu Tea Factory
    Kattabettu Tea Factory

    Aravinda: Was there infrastructure upgrade to the factories?

    Supriya: Most of our factories are 30 to 40 years old, some as old as 50. No upgrade had happened and only some machineries had been upgraded. There has not been an integrated upgrade of the machinery. We have got an upgradation plan as well as funding support from the government of Tamil Nadu and NABARD, under a scheme called as the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund. We have got about INRs 18.5 crore. We are renovating five factories which in the next six months will be state-of-the-art factories.

    Aravinda: What makes up INDCOSERVE’s product portfolio?

    Supriya: So we introduced the Bedford (named for the famous neighbourhood in Coonoor), BlueMont, Honey Hill, Marlimund, which is the local lake here. We introduced about 11 new varieties of tea. Earlier, we had 3, which we are supplying in the Public Distribution System (PDS) system, all three were dust. We just used to sell it through auction centres. For the first time we introduced leaf tea. That market we were not tapping. Plus we came out with a niche product, which is under packaging right now, the Nilgiri kahwa. We experimented, we have patented it. It has green tea, it has almonds, it has got saffron, it has elaichi (cardamom), laung (clove), and it has got rose petals. So now we are in the process of packaging it and bringing it out. So likewise, we are in the process of making a Nilgiri-Madurai jasmine, a mint tea, a masala … these are some of the varieties which are coming soon.

    Aravinda: Why the need to create a brand for INDCOSERVE and not just continue on the auction route?

    Supriya: We realized during our field assessments that we were a hundred percent dependent on the supply in the PDS. We are the largest supplier of teas in the PDS system of the government of Tamil Nadu. That makes us the largest supplier of tea in PDS anywhere in India because we are the only state where our teas are available in ration shops. We supply about 2,000 tons of tea annually through 30,000 shops of the government of Tamil Nadu. That’s our main business, that’s our bread and butter. It’s about 200 tonnes a month. It is very challenging, but then that gives us a very nice market to our famers because the tea that we supply in the PDS is not free. People have to buy it. It’s only an outlet that the government of Tamil Nadu has very kindly provided.

    But our factories were making losses. They did not explore other avenues, newer markets. They were quite content within the space that was made available to them. They were also bringing the tea to only one platform, Tea Serve,  The tea market is volatile; we were vulnerable. Therefore there was a need for us to kind of explore other avenues. Why not explore selling packaged teas, that can be displayed on the shelf. If you want to sell, you have to create a brand.

    We opened the Indco Tea House. We have two now, one at Kattabettu and another at Bedford. We are opening four in Chennai, in the metro stations. We have launched the tea trucks, we are calling them as tea vandis, a tea and a snack shop. This is again a very unique concept coming from a cooperative federation. They are very beautiful vehicles. Five vehicles are already operating and 20 more vehicles are joining our fleet in next three months. They are in Botanical Gardens and Doddabetta, those locations. The new vehicles will go outside the Nilgiris too. They are very popular with tourists because apart from what people want, they also serve wholesome food like thennai mururku, payasam made of samai rice. The local whole foods is also being used, which is healthy and nutritious. And we have partnered with the local Toda tribal group to operate these vehicles.

    Our dream is that we should be like Cafe Coffee Day chain or Starbucks. Why can’t we, a home grown outlet, be like that?

    INDCO’s Tea House

    Aravinda: The shift to making leaf tea, how did that go down with the factories?

    Supriya: I must say that it is much more easy to convince local farmers, and it was easier to convince our growers then to convince the officers. Because I think they have a vision which is much more far reaching. It was not very difficult to convince them because leaf was not selling at all because South India is mostly dust market. So you will find that the dust used to get picked up, but the leaf would not sell or sell at a very low rate.

    Thanks to these efforts, with leaf tea, we almost doubled our turnover in one year. We have almost doubled our farmers’ income. Out of 16 factories, except three, everybody was making loss in 2018-19. Last year, except three, everybody has made profits.

    Another thing we decided to do, which is the game changer for our organization, is we have gone ahead with the international certifications like fair trade. Our fair trade audit got concluded just now. We will know in a week’s time about the audit outcome. Outcome is not important. What is important is the process. We have three of our 16 factories who got trustea certification for the first time. When they went through the process, our farmers and our officers looked at our factories. They looked like they were bombed, they were so dirty with microbial infections, with  people not conscious about the cleanliness, the hygiene, the workers safety, the workers, rights.

    Now all our factories have workers restrooms, excellent toilets, all newly constructed or renovated, clean drinking water, safety gears, boots, shoes, and fire safety.

    When they went through the process, I would say it is an internal journey.

    Why should a government body always be referred to as not producing good quality tea, inferior, not clean? We want to break all these stereotypes. So we have established one model at Kattabettu where the entire factory is better than a private factory, and with our own money.

    When we have also eco-restored the factory, that is another futuristic area we are going to, where we have planted sholas, grasslands. We have created an eco-center within the factory saying that we are located in a biosphere and are responsible for the ecology.

    We have demonstrated to our officers and to our farmers, that, look at it, you have done it. Your organization has done it. So why not others? And others are coming and doing it.

    We have set up teams. There were hardly any people here. We have a separate marketing team. We have a quality team. We have a technical team who looks at all these aspects. We have appointed an Environment officer, somebody who will look at the environmental aspect of our factories. We burn wood which is not good. We need to find alternatives. We are looking at LPG to have the gas-fired factories. We’re looking at the options, like solar. One of our factories at Kaikatti, at converting into a completely solar integrated roof system, making it a carbon neutral manufacturing unit.

    Aravinda: Are you still using the Tea Serve auction platform?

    Supriya: Tea Serve was set up in 2000. An internal study conducted pointed to some bias in selling our teas. There was no electronic platform at that time. Tea Serve was the first electronic auction platform in India. Another reform we brought was on Tea Serve. Tea Serve was operating on outdated software and we were not aligned to the all-India software of the tea board. As a result, our market was limited only to some 15-20 buyers. We migrated to the software platform of the tea board.Now we are at par with any software platform. Earlier we were not taking our teas to any other auction. Today, instead of one, today, we are selling at five auction centres. We are at Kochi, at Coimbatore, at Coonoor auction centres; we are also part of their new experiment with the Japanese auction system. Within a year, we quickly moved over from a very archaic and old system at which we were operating to a dynamic platform and we are aligned with everybody else. Whenever we find that we need to balance the market, we can use this platform. So strategically, I think it’s good to have Tea Serve, but it is not good to confine ourselves only to it.

    We have an all India platform available to us. Definitely our teas are fetching much better than ever before. The average price of tea was never more than INRS 62 to 65. Now, it is never below INRs 100. As a result, we have been able to pay a historical price to other farmers when we paid them in the month of September – 28 rupees per kilo of green tea leaf, which is the highest ever in the history of INDCOSERVE, thanks to all these initiatives being taken.

    Aravinda: Are you making more leaf or more dust tea?

    Supriya: We make about 14 million kilograms of tea every year, all grades of tea, leaf and dust. We adjust according to the market. Whenever the leaf prices are more, we can tweak our manufacturing process to make 60% leaf and 40% dust. All these things have been brought into the system now. So there is a market consciousness, market intelligence.

    Aravinda: Are you making green teas?

    Supriya: Not yet, but our factory is getting ready to make orthodox and orthodox green teas. We were not even making orthodox until now.

    Aravinda: Is India the market or is export also part of the plan?

    Supriya: Export is definitely a very big thing on our agenda this year. If we are looking at improving our farmers’ income, if we really want to play an important role in their livelihood, improving further their livelihood opportunities, then I think we need to find markets abroad.

    Thanks to COVID, we have not been able to really travel and do that kind of market exploration. But, recently we have appointed an export consultant, on a part-time basis to help us look at the export market. Very good inquiries have come in and we are pursuing them.

    Aravinda: What’s the brand INDCOSERVE story?

    Supriya: If I put myself in my farmers’ shoes, then our story would be that we want to produce a tea which is sustainable, which is ethical and, which goes … these words are very commonly used, like empowerment … but we really mean that we want to produce a tea, which builds the lives of farmers towards a better future. From an organization that was a sleeping giant to one that can show the world that a small growers’ organization can be the best among the best, that’s  what our ambition is.

    Aravinda: Is tea farming of interest to the Badaga youth now? Will this stop the migration to the cities?

    Supriya: With the organic cultivation that we are promoting now, we are registering our farmers to move towards the organic cultivation in the next 3-4 years. That is the plan. I think the young people are getting interested in this new and niche areas. If the factories are old, the machinery is dilapidated, if there is no technology, we cannot attract young people, they will not find any value in it. So we are renovating our factory, we are modernising our machines, We are moving towards eco-friendly technologies like LPG, solar. We are also moving towards a massive digitisation. We have launched a growers’ app. I mentioned to you some time back about the annual awards. We are introducing the young tea grower award. We want them them come into the boards during the election. That’s when change will happen. We want young farmers to come. They will come only when they look at the factory and say, it’s next gen.

    Aravinda: What has turning profitable meant?

    Supriya: We are not looking at profitability only in terms of money. We are looking at it in terms of what role we played for the people for whom we were established. For us, profitability will be in those areas, look at the UN sustainability goals – poverty, hunger. Did you provide livelihood opportunities? Did you reduce their vulnerability to situations like Covid?

    Yes, we did. During Covid, we were the only cooperative, only factories operating with all precautions, because there was a huge demand for tea from various other states, especially from Kerala. Where we supplied 2000 tonnes in a year, we supplied it in 21 days to Kerala. None of our farmers had to borrow. None of our farmers had to face the brunt of Covid. That is where our profitability, our existence matters. Did you reduce the vulnerability of your farmer to  unprecedented crisis like Covid. That’s where we played a very important role.

    We are very proud about the fact that when this order was asked, whether we will be able to do it, within three days, all the farmers, they sprung into action. We opened up factories, supported by the government of Tamil Nadu. Farmers bore the gloves, the masks, the sanitation, and the medical checkup. We were the only people working. We worked through the entire COVID period and we fulfilled our commitment and earned INR 21crores, which we distribute it to our farmers. I think, this is where the real profitability or the success of an organization lies, when you are able to support your farmers in situations like this.

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    Aravinda Anantharaman

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  • Rudra Chatterjee

    Will the pandemic induced pivot to selling tea direct to consumers be the catalyst the farm-to-cup movement needed? 2020 accelerated a shift to digital media, one that many tea producers embraced. Did this bring more customers? Do online stores increase sales? Tea Biz posed these questions to Rudra Chatterjee, Managing Director of century-old Luxmi Group, a tea industry vertical that auctions millions of kilos annually. Last year the Kolkata-based Luxmi quickly adapted to selling 250-gram packets of tea directly to thousands of consumers, a pivot that Chatterjee says brings significant benefits. 

    Rudra Chatterjee Luxmi Group, Kolkata, India
    Luxmi Online Shop
    Luxmi now offers teas directly to consumers from 25 owned estates in India and Africa

    Will the Pandemic and Pivot Online be the Catalyst the Farm-to-cup Movement Needed?

    Aravinda Anantharaman discusses a pandemic pivot with Rudra Chatterjee, Managing Director of the Luxmi Group, which owns tea estates in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura in India, and Rwanda in Africa producing collectively 20 million kilos of tea annually.

    Tea Biz: How has 2020 been for you? Did you shift to selling online? 

    Rudra Chatterjee: This was the first time that we sold tea directly to consumers. And the reaction is amazing because, after all as growers of tea, it’s great to hear from someone who’s drinking that tea at home. Also, for us to get feedback one week or two weeks after we produce the tea. Because tea growing is, in some ways, quite a remote occupation because … you make the tea, it goes into the auction, you get a date which is a few weeks or usually a few months away. And then you just see a price and the name of a customer. Nothing more. But here you are getting emails, questions on how to brew the tea, pictures of how they are drinking their tea … It’s fascinating for us. We are getting more and more customers from around the world but also from within West Bengal, who are reaching out to us and actually subscribing to our teas – not just buying our teas but asking for delivery once a month or once in fifteen days. Which we love. It’s been energizing for me and my colleagues who are growing the tea in the estate. 

    We are getting more and more customers from around the world but also from within West Bengal, who are reaching out to us and actually subscribing to our teas – not just buying our teas but asking for delivery once a month or once in fifteen days.

    Do you think selling direct to customers online is here to stay? 

    Chatterjee: It is not still the dominant way we sell. The dominant way we sell is the auction. We depend on the auctions. We depend on the large companies coming and buying tea from the auctions. This is a very small part. Each sale online is for 250g or 500g. It’s difficult or inconceivable for us at this point to imagine we are going to sell a lot of tea like that. But one thing I have learnt through the pandemic is that whatever I thought was inconceivable happened. So I don’t know what the future holds. Even if this doesn’t become a major source of revenue for the company, it is certainly a major source of conversation. Tea planters are always great at that from who bought their tea from different parts to actually googling the place the tea order came from. It’s great fun for us. I don’t know if it will be a major part but I sure hope people see that the tea is great and they continue ordering at least at the level they are ordering now. 

    Are there any consumer favorites from the various Luxmi teas? 

    Chatterjee: So our most successful has been Makaibari, Darjeeling, which is not a surprise. Makaibari has a name that people recognize, especially people who have lived in Darjeeling at some point, they may have been to Makaibari. And so that is popular. We are seeing quite a bit of demand for green tea, and also within India, which I am quite surprised by because green tea was never sold to the domestic market – it was always sold to Amritsar and from there, exported.

    In general there has been interest in all our teas, whether it is the Rwandan teas … and the comments are very knowledgeable. There was one about how the Rwandan tea was very bright in colour which is exactly the right description for it, that is a tasters description, it’s a brisk and bright tea. And the discussion of the first flush vs second flush in Darjeeling. How the first flush is mellow. Also, I think people being at home, they probably had more time to brew the tea in the right way. People are much more curious when they buy from estates, what kinds of teas are being grown and produced this time of the year, so those kinds of conversations are very encouraging. 

    What are the advantages of selling direct to customers? 

    Chatterjee: I think one of the really interesting outcomes of being able to sell the tea is that there is a better margin for producers when they sell directly. There can be much more fair trade and what percentage of the revenue of these tea packets can go to the people who are working. Because we don’t see the front end of the business as producers and the front end who are the retailers don’t see the issues we are dealing with either. Even if we do very little of the whole gamut, even if it’s 5% of our business, we understand the whole issue and the challenges which are very difficult to solve. The workers, their wages, their education, their health, in an environment where there is no margin in the business as a producer. Yet there is significant prices that the final consumer pays. How much of it goes into packaging, on advertising and other things. And how much of it should come to developing healthier environment at the production site. All these conversations are things that will become more relevant, more discussed as we run the whole gamut even for a small part of the business. 

    Has it been challenging to get online and adopt to this new way of business? 

    Chatterjee: It hasn’t been challenging at all. Tea estates are designed for sending samples and we are sending samples to buyers around the world regularly. It just happens to be B2B buyers and we just happen to have a courier system that works. Someone who knows how to make that work. Doing a B2C sale – I guess the volumes are so small so it’s okay. If the volumes were to get bigger, we need to train some people in the estate which would be a fantastic thing for the people, to train workers to become logistics guys. That will be a great opportunity for the workers. I am quite excited overall. 

    I have set up an alarm when there’s a sale – it happens 4-5 times a day but when it happens I WhatsApp it to the manager who has produced the tea. Any email is immediately answered because people are very excited. It’s just the knowledge of what the customer says about the product, what they think about the brewing. There was one comment where someone said, I know you are not supposed to have Darjeeling with milk but I love my Darjeeling with milk, and the manager says, if you want it with milk, maybe I will make a stronger brew and send you something. As a consumer I am very excited as well, to be an individual customer and asking for your own processed product, in a product like tea. For many consumers, tea is like sugar and milk and you never thought you could get it changed based on your preferences. But you can. It’s cooking. So if you want your tea with milk you have to make sure you have a stronger leaf which holds your milk. And so all of these things are, I think it’s a good move, and combined with the fact that I have also seen – we have a hotel in the estate that we started a few months ago – I have actually seen people visit the tea estates. The combination of hearing from customers and seeing customers in tea estates is – the first time for more than 100 years in the history of Luxmi tea, this is happening. It’s quite amazing. 

    Tea family on Luxmi Tea Estate
    Tea families benefit from higher margins when companies sell directly to consumers

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  • Women’s rights in tea with Sabita Banerji and Krishanti Dharmaraj

    In recognition of International Women’s Day, Tea Biz spoke with Sabita Banerji and Krishanti Dharmaraj from THIRST, The International Roundtable for Sustainable Tea. Sabita was born and raised in tea gardens in Assam and Munnar. She is an economic justice advisor and the founder and CEO of THIRST. Krishanti Dharmaraj is a THIRST trustee and Executive Director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in New York and co-founder of WILD for Human Rights (Women’s Institute for Leadership Development). 

    A conversation with THIRST’s Sabita Banerji and Krishanti Dharmaraj
    Tea workers march in Munnar, South India, during Pembilai Orumai (Unity of Women) strike in 2015. Photo by Sabita Banerji

    Where do we stand with respect to workers rights, and women’s rights, in particular, in tea in countries like India?

    Sabita Banerji: There’s a lot of talk about labor rights on tea plantations all over the world, but very much so in India as well. The majority of workers particularly at the lowest paid level, the tea pluckers, are women. The industry talks about women having delicate fingers and being able to pluck the two leaves in the bud. But when I’ve spoken to women workers, in the Dooars, for example, and asked them, why do you think there are more women employed at this level, they said, because we are easier to boss. So, you know, they are aware of their situation. I think the vast numbers of women working in tea plantations are kind of stuck at the level of tea pluckers. They don’t have the kind of education or the empowerment to be able to stand up for their rights as they should be. And so, it’s important to empower them because it’s the right thing to do. And it’s important because it’s such a major element of the tea industry.

    Krishanti Dharmaraj: I want to say it is the right thing to do as well as it’s a smart thing to do. It’s important to recognise that there’s a structural nature to discrimination against women that is not limited to the tea plantation. We see that at every level, but when you take gender and intersect that with class, with caste, and with ethnicity, then at that point, the discrimination doubles. 

    So when you look at the women who are in tea plantation, and I can speak for Sri Lanka, this was the Tamil community that went, that the British took from India to Sri Lanka. They are at the lowest level. It was very recently that they were able to vote in Sri Lanka. So in that context, that systemic discrimination seeps through. And so when you see, even in spite of that systemic nature of discrimination, that women are rising up, that is extraordinary.

    And I think the tea plantations, the businesses as well as government, must pay attention to that uprising. 

    Sabita: And that is the case on virtually every tea growing area all over the world, but particularly in India where the workers tend to come from another part of that country, a poorer part, a more vulnerable part. So, very often as well as being vulnerable as women, they’re also vulnerable as migrants, as lower caste, as tribal people as Krishanti said. There is a particular vulnerability there in the tea estates.

    But where have you seen the change, where women have risen to protest this? 

    Sabita: I saw this first hand, in Munnar in 2015, and this is what inspired me to set up THIRST in the first place, The International Round Table For Sustainable Tea. 

    I had gone to visit my birth place, Munnar, and it just happened that that same day, the uprising of women workers, “Pembilai Orumai”(unity of women) had just begun. It was really an unprecedented event, that these thousands of women went on strike. And there were not only striking against management but also against the trade unions. They said that the trade unions are male dominated and that they’re not representing the women workers fairly or effectively. And so for, for many, many days, they, they stayed on strike. They did hunger strikes. They were not allowed to negotiate with the employers and the government as part of the tripartite pay negotiations because they weren’t a formal trade union.

    But the chief minister of Kerala agreed to talk to them and agreed with some of their demands. And subsequently that group of women has formed a trade union. So, you know, it probably is one of the few, genuinely representative of women workers, trade unions that there is in the tea industry.

    Another example is a cooperative called the Sanjukta Vikas co-operative in Darjeeling which runs a tea garden called Mineral Springs. This was originally a British era tea estate which was closed down when the British left and the workers were left pretty much destitute, which is still happening today.

    All over India, estates are closing and the workers have no other source of income. But this group managed with the support of a local NGO called DLR Prerna and tea promoters to actually form a cooperative, which involves several villages around the area. There has to be a balance of men and women and women have an equal say in how that co-operative is run. And they’re growing not only tea but they’ve now diversified into other crops, and they’re doing dairy … the tea itself is really good quality. It’s organic, it’s fair trade and it’s doing well.

    What’s enabling this show of strength? And what kind of support do these women need? 

    Sabita: In the case of the women from Munnar, I asked them that question because everybody around me was saying, we’ve never seen a strike like this before. And I think the local, townspeople were quite impressed with the women being strong and standing up for themselves.

    I was asking them, why do you think this has happened now? How are they now aware of their rights? They were saying that they were underpaid, their bonus was being reduced from what they were expecting it to be and they responded with just one word: WhatsApp.

    With the younger generation being on WhatsApp and I think that the uprising itself was pretty much coordinated using social media. That’s one thing, information and communication but also the strength and determination of these women themselves. What they need, in addition to their own strength and determination and information, is support from other trade unions, from local people. During that strike, they were fed by the local shopkeepers, and hotel keepers came and supported them.

    They’re now a very small trade union. They only have about 240 members, at least when I last spoke to them, that was the case. And then not really being heard by management. So I think they need more support perhaps from other trade unions, from the company itself. The tea company should be valuing this amazing resource that they have in their midst, of these women who are able to really genuinely represent their coworkers, and to tell them what they really want and need, and to respect those wishes so that they have a contented and thriving workforce.

    Krishanti: To add to that, I think it’s important to also recognise where they land, because this is not a group of women where after they finish work, they could go home and relax right there. They’re also taking care of their families, their in-laws, they are part of a community, and children. In most cases, they also face domestic abuse. Intimate partner violence is pretty high.

    When you see a woman really receiving her pay check, her face looks very different on that day than any other day. So part of it, and most of the time at least for Sri Lanka, there was a time where the husband got the money because he was able to sign for the pay check, even to put the thumbprint. 

    There’s been a shift. For the first time, to be able to feel like she is the caretaker of her family and because of her hands. She is the caretaker because it is for her hands that the entire family gets not only paid but has the ability to just stay in that steady state.

    So what we need to recognise is that if she is taking up to actually striking and pausing her work, that is not an easy decision for her. She’s got to really realise that there’s no other way, but to strike. There’s no other way out. So it is not a decision that the women in the tea estates would take lightly. They would take that decision only because there is nowhere else to go. But at that moment, when they choose to, when they have made that decision, then there’s nothing else that will stop that. Because there’s nothing else to lose. 

    When you saw the uprising where the women were striking, where were their husbands and children and other family? Were they with them? 

    Sabita Banerji

    Sabita: The women actually refused to allow their husbands to join them.

    The women were all sitting on the ground, outside the head office of the company and the men were in a side street. They were kind of messing around and they had thrown lots of tea leaves on the road and they were picking up these tea leaves and throwing them at passing cars and laughing. It was a kind of festival atmosphere for them. They were being like naughty school boys.

    And meanwhile, just around the corner, the sea of very serious women were sitting there. They had brought not only the tea industry to a stand still that day or that week, but also the tourism industry, because they were sitting on the main road through Munnar.

    They were not to be messed with, those women and they were very consciously keeping the men out of it because they were saying, we are the ones that do the work and so we are going to speak up for ourselves.

    What would you say to this display of strength? What has it taken them to arrive here?

    Krishanti: Centuries of oppression.

    To me, there are three things:

    It’s the timing and the networking. WhatsApp is one extraordinary way that people are able to organise. The first thing is that it’s not that women don’t know their rights. Innately, we know, even as children, when someone does something to us that is not right. These women know. They do not believe sometimes that they have the ability to speak up and protect themselves because the consequences would be much harsher if they speak up. So I think the rights are already in place when they have a space to articulate them.

    And then moment to express them. They will take that up. And I think now more than ever, it’s almost in the air when you look at the informal sector. And in this case, I think the tea plantation workers are considered formal because they are able to unionise. There is a movement within a movement to see that those most marginalised are rising. And I think that’s in the air. And we cannot deny that it’s sweeping across the globe. With the extraordinary amount of oppression that women are facing at this level, there is a moment that is right. And I think they’re picking up on that. 

    Assam faces the flak in the conversation around workers’ rights. Why? What can you tell us about that?

    Sabita: I’ve always wondered why there is this intense focus on Assam. I mean, this situation is very difficult there for, for workers, but it is probably worse in the Dooars, in West Bengal, in Darjeeling as well. Despite Darjeeling tea being a high value export commodity the same issues apply in any tea growing area. In terms of what’s happening in Assam, currently, there has recently been a small pay increase. Last September, many hundreds of thousands of tea workers there had gone on strike and that was a trade union organised strike demanding an increase in wages to 351 rupees a day. Which funnily enough is what the government had recommended back in 2018 and yet has never been implemented. So they’re only asking for what the government has recommended, in a system where they’re supposed to be tripartite wage negotiation.

    So, you know, you can see there’s something not quite right with this system where workers are still being paid so much below the living wage. To come back to the question that you asked about the men, and it also links to something Krishanti said about domestic violence — one of the issues is with the fact that most of the tea pluckers are women — and the industry relies very heavily on that labor — one of the side effects of this is that the men on the tea estates tend to be underemployed or unemployed. And this leads to a lot of problems like alcohol abuse, drug abuse and domestic violence. Often men will migrate away from the estates to try to earn money elsewhere. Sometimes they don’t come back or don’t send money back. This causes a lot of societal problems, the fact that there’s so much pressure on the women, not only to do all the unpaid domestic care work, but also to do all the labor as well. 

    Often organisations come along and suggest solutions like alternative income generating projects, like having a cow or having a kitchen garden or something … that too is something the woman has to do on top of everything else.

    One of the women I met in the Dooars told me that yes, we had a cow at some point, but I couldn’t look after the cow AND pluck the tea AND look after the house. So we had to sell the cow. Like we were discussing before, there needs to be a whole change of mindset about how this industry is structured and how it operates.

    K Dharmaraj

    Krishanti: One of the things we haven’t talked about is the level of harassment and violence these women face in the job as well. So they face discrimination, harassment, and violence at home, right in the community as well as at work. Then there’s structural discrimination that discriminates the entire community.

    How can we persuade producers and governments to look at it from a woman’s point of view? What is it that we need to show them? 

    Last year, the international labor organization passed a convention called ILO 190 to eliminate harassment in the world of work. So there are things that I think that’s important to recognise. One is that the convention talks about harassment and violence against men and women. And harassment is not limited to sexual harassment. It is a broader definition, That is extraordinary because that allows us to really address the systemic nature of discrimination. And it talks about the world of work. The employer is responsible for ensuring and enabling an environment for the workers to thrive. Because it’s the ILO, it speaks to government, it speaks to employers and unions. This particular treaty, if ratified and implemented, it might support the shift in this structural systems. Because it is not one system. 

    What would you say these women want? 

    Sabita: The women were demanding better pay, they were demanding all the things that are promised to them under the Plantation Labor Act, which was, you know, decent housing, healthcare, education. A lot of outsiders look into the situation and say, actually, this situation is not really sustainable. A company can’t provide all those things that a government would normally provide AND pay decent wages, especially as they’re not being paid necessarily a very fair price for the tea.

    But when you talk to workers themselves, because they’ve been in that situation for many, many generations, it’s sometimes hard for them to see what life might be like, without all of those supports. So often they say, no, we do want to keep the rations and the benefits that are provided rather than … it’s just, it’s almost like, their prison is also their safety net.

    In Sri Lanka, there have been some attempts to set up community development forums, attempts to actually give the housing and the land to the workers. So they’re not lines which are just connected to be owned by the tea company, but they are actually owned by the workers and then that developed some pride in their own.

    Krishanti: I think I wanted to just step back to say that in the context of existing systems, yes, they want the basic rights. If you pause and if you allow them to speak freely, and if you allow, if you give them the space to imagine, that imagination runs wild and that is completely out of the existing structure.

    Within the existing structure, like when you talk about Sri Lanka, yes, there have been attempts as well as successful ways in which women have inherited land, in partnership or by themselves. But most of the time it’s written to the man because of an inability to do that. Sri Lanka has one of the highest literacy rates — it’s close to 90+ percent, but in the tea estate, they barely make it, they’re unable to even sign their name. Now we have provided them the ability to sign their name when they take their pay check. But that is all they can do. 

    Sabita: In Indian states like Kerala, there are very high literacy rates and other kind of social standards, but not on the tea plantation. So, the disparity is extraordinary. 

    Krishanti: If you take it within the context, yes, they want to make sure that the housing is there.

    They want running water. They want to have toilets that have doors. They need to be able to take showers. So, when you’re looking at the basics, they are looking at economic, social, and cultural rights to be in place that India and most of these countries have already signed on to that human rights treaty. And it is only provided for some not others. Education. They want everything that any regular citizen would want. Access to education, housing, healthcare, decent work sanitation, right. To express themselves, you know, in their job. 

    Sabita: About education, everywhere I went, every tea worker I spoke to wanted to get a decent education for their children so that they wouldn’t have to work in tea plantations anymore.

    Krishanti: When you ask, is there anything else you want, the first thing they say is I want to be treated well as a human being, with respect. They know they can’t get in the system. So, they will compromise that right to dignity to have the basics for their family.

    So, it is about the treatment. It is about the inherent right to dignity that is violated on a daily basis because of the way in which structurally they are discriminated against as a community, as disposable humans, who they cannot dispose because they provide a specific service for a massive industry.

    Sabita: Krishanti talking of them being disposable. … in fact, that’s exactly what is currently happening in Kenya where there has been increasing amounts of mechanisation. For example, Finlay’s has been laying off thousands of workers and bringing in machines instead, and it’s mostly women who are now losing their jobs as a result.

    In Malawi recently, there has been an interesting development in which Camellia, a tea company that owns many local tea companies there, has agreed to a settlement for women who made claims of sexual abuse, rape, and sexual violence. Camellia, thanks to the work of Leigh Day lawyers have not only agreed to make a settlement, but they’ve also agreed to put in place other initiatives to actually empower women and protect them going forward. 

    When you ask, what do women need, I think some of these. And what do they want? Some of these things that the settlement includes, like gender equality, scholarships,  female leadership training programs, which hopefully will also be accompanied by the willingness to engage women at more senior levels.

    But these are all things that we’ll add to. Women, not only attaining their rights, but as Krishanti said, feeling that they are being treated with respect and with the dignity that any human being deserves. 

    Krishanti: When a woman loses her job, it’s not just her losing a job that is that entire family’s livelihood is at stake. We need to understand it is not only that the woman loses. And that’s an entire company, community’s livelihood and the quality of life that is at stake. And that in itself is an economic threat to any government, to have that many unemployed or underemployed. So I think when you ask, what do the women want, if we pay attention to what women want it is what a country wants. So you can take it from a holistic standpoint and say, if you really believe in democracy and human rights for all the people as leaders, then you need to listen to those who are in the margins. Because without them, there wouldn’t be democracy. We can talk, it will be rhetoric. And for a business, it is that a happy worker, is a more productive worker. As individuals, if we’re in a better mood, we can get a lot more done. But if we are beaten up every day, that is a very different conversation to be had.

    Paying attention to what they want and the way they want it, I think is the trick and the importance of it, not what a company, the industry or government believes they should be given. 

    Sabita: That idea of a happy contented worker being more productive was actually quantified. Care international produced a paper on the business benefits of empowering women tea workers in Sri Lanka, which actually showed that the productivity increased. But of course that shouldn’t be the reason why companies should do it, but this should be reassuring for them. 

    Also, there are so many long-term benefits. The younger generation don’t want to buy tea that’s been produced using slave labor and sexual harassment of women. They increasingly want things to be ethically produced, environmentally friendly. And if it’s not, they will know about it because of social media. And so, I can visualise a future in which tea is not grown in plantations, but it’s grown more like in Mineral Springs where it’s interspersed with other crops ,where there’s cooperatives or other business models as well, but ones in which the producers have a say in their own future and are fairly paid.

    This tea plantation model, which was set up 150 years ago — it’s still that same model —  is just not appropriate for this day and age. They’re huge monocultures with a captive workforce. It just cannot continue that way. It needs to be really shaken up and something beautiful and dignified and, healthy and thriving needs to come out of it instead. 

    Do you think mechanisation is one of those things that’s going to bring about this change?

    Sabita: There are some limitations to where mechanisation is possible. Tea is mostly grown on slopes and it is quite difficult to mechanise tea plucking in hilly areas. Also, tea that is plucked using machines is not as good quality because it can’t actually differentiate the leaves as well as a human can. It’s possible that a lot of the lower value, high volume tea will end up being harvested through mechanisation as it’s happening in lots of other sectors like tomatoes and grapes and so on. But there will always be a space for high quality tea to be plucked by hand, like the Darjeeling first flush, which is very valuable. And hopefully, those who use that recognised skill will be fairly rewarded. 

    Is it about holding the producers more accountable? 

    Sabita: I think that the problem is that the tea industry has an almost 200 year history. There are all these defence mechanisms. So the minute any criticism is made of the tea industry, they immediately go into defence mode and deny that it’s happening. They will say, you’re just victimising us or it’s politically motivated or, or that was just an isolated incident. It’s not true. Or the workers are lying to you. That’s not the case. So unfortunately, they know what the problems are. They know what civil society thinks the problems are and what the workers say the problems are.  I think what they need now is, is to understand that the, that the consumers will no longer stand for it.

    We now need to look to the future and try to work out a way of growing and selling tea that actually aligns with the sustainable development goals, be that through, at an environmental level or for decent work or ending poverty or ending inequality, all of those things. 

    Krishanti: I think we have to really recognise that what we are doing is perpetuating aspects of colonialism in these estates. That is like the first realisation and to really sustainably transition, you can’t just break it down overnight and destroy the well being and the ability for communities and individuals to live. I think this is where the collective power of the government, the industry and the workers needs to come together. Even the best estates, even when women and the workers are treated well, the model itself is not sustainable, right. It doesn’t allow humans to thrive. And I think that this sense of coming together to come up with solutions is important.

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  • Q|A Narendranath Dharmaraj

    Assam
    Assam Tea Garden

    Narendranath Dharmaraj has spent nearly five decades in plantation and agribusiness management. In this conversation he talks about the viability of the Indian tea industry and in particular the outdated nature of the plantation model. Dharmaraj has proposed an alternative where he recommends that estate owners distribute land-ownership in favor of the plantation employees and buy back the raw material through a co-operative outfit. Here, we speak to him on how this model will especially address the issues of labour and wages that have hit an impasse.

    A conversation with Narendranath Dharmaraj

    What in your opinion, are the main problems affecting the Indian tea industry that have prompted the need for a structural change?

    Dharmaraj: As in any other business, the three fundamental tenets of business are production, in this case, crop production, the sale price and the cost. What is unique about this business is that crop production is rather weather dependent, increasingly so in an era when we are well and truly feeling the impact of climate change. Tea is a rain-fed crop largely and in the recent past, the rainfall pattern has become very erratic. No longer are growers able to control the crops and even predict it with any degree of accuracy. So crop – not that it ever was – is increasingly out of the control of the management. Price, it’s a commodity and depends on the global supply and demand, particularly after WTO* has come in. Prior to that we had a protectionist kind of market, particularly, the south Indian teas had a captive USSR market as part of the rupee-rouble agreement. I remember the joke those days used to be that an Indian student going to study in the USSR was expected to take a container of tea with them. That’s how good it was.

    But with the disintegration of the USSR and the advent of the WTO when quantitative restrictions were lifted, there was global movement of commodities. Consuming countries were able to source cheaper teas from southeast Asian producers like Vietnam, Indonesia etc. This impacted the Indian price very much. Our exports suffered. The year 2000 was a watershed year, since then the industry has been seeing a downslide.

    Going back, the crop is not in your control, the price is not in your control, and that leaves only the cost. What is unique about our tea industry is that 65% of its cost is wages. That is, as you know, completely usual. In any business, the max will be 15% as the load of manpower cost. Here you are talking about 65%.

    Having done operational plantation work for four decades, I am convinced that the only really controllable factor in this business is the cost, namely the employee cost. And employee cost is increasingly getting largely out of management. Because disposable income in the country and the world as a macro scenario is going up. Much as planters claim that although cash wages is less, we are giving them other benefits like housing, schooling and preschool, childcare, medical help etc., ultimately with the exposure that people are having through media and social media, they are comparing what they earn with the cash wages that the other industries are paying or that the urbanites are getting. There will be aspirational demand for increasing cash wages and of course, the one which is typical to plantation, the wage-related social and welfare cost will continue to remain. So wages are also beginning to be an aspect beyond the management control. You cannot run a business like that, where the three fundamental tenets of the business are completely beyond your control.

    Everyone will recommend that branding is the panacea for all ailments. If you look at branding history in tea in particular, you will find that the packers and branders are not the producers. Packing and branding and retailing does give good margins but it’s not the producer doing all that. When producers did that by forward integrating, like what the Tatas did with Tata Tea and Tetley, and what Unilever did by backward integration by merging Tea Estates India and Doom Dooma India Limited with Brooke Bond, in either case they quit from plantations. I call this the “When milk is cheap why own a cow” syndrome.

    When you can source teas cheaper from the market why bear the cost of having to produce it. So branding as a panacea, value addition, moving up the value chain, in my mind, unless it is done by the producer, it doesn’t make any sense. What happens is that when producers become successful in that, they say, ‘Well. I don’t have to necessarily produce.’ 

    N. Dharmaraj
    At work in the garden

    All this makes one think what is the economic and socially sustainable model for the plantation industry, for both owners and the large number of workforce dependent on it. The industry is unique in that it employs hundreds of thousands of people, the rural population, in a manner of speaking. Therefore the model has to be such that it supports them from the social and economic standpoint and gives economic sustainability to the owners. As I said, wages will continue to rise, living conditions will continue to be under pressure. In today’s world, everyones looking for transparency in the value chain and thanks to block chain technology etc. consumers want to know the share that each stakeholder is getting, working backwards from the consumer price. 

    What this means is further pressure on the business. It’s already in trouble and these troubles will make it worse. In terms of data, taking 1985 as the base year, wages have gone up by 8 times in real terms, whereas prices have gone up 2 times. This is a huge disparity between wage increase and price increase and that gap is going to widen. The other standard response by producers is to increase volumes. In a business with 65% of its cost of production on wages any increase in volume also comes with a huge cost. Additional volume doesn’t always give you the contribution of a positive bottom line. So to my mind the standard response of trying to increase volumes is not going to help.

    Ultimately we need to look at a model which is self sustaining, which is holistic in terms of how it will take care of the interest of the growers and the workforce. What we are looking at is a model, when I recommend distribution of land and ownership in favour of the workforce, We are looking at something similar to a Bought Leaf model. Bought Leaf business never loses money because you work backwards from the End Price. (End Price – Cost) – Margin = the price you pay the producer for raw material.

    We are suggesting a model where existing employees become owners of the land, become smallholders who will supply raw material to the body corporate who will then process and market it. 

    In 2004-05, Tata Tea exited its plantations in Munnar, transferring ownership to its employees creating the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations Company Pvt. Ltd. (KDHP) But it hasn’t been without its share of problems. What would you say didn’t work here?

    Dharmaraj: The KDHP model was an evolution in this direction. With KDPH, the Tatas diluted shareholding in favour of employees with the primary objective, I’d imagine, to create a greater sense of participation and accountability. But, taking a ringside view of it, I don’t think that purpose got served at all. For a couple of reasons: it was not backed by adequate sharing and communication because again, drawing from my own experience dealing with the workforce, unless you explain the scenario, that going forward if they don’t increase the output, the costs will escalate, the business will suffer… that kind of awareness was not brought. The employees thought that suddenly the company has become very generous and are giving them shares. So the sense of accountability didn’t really come in. 

    Even here, in the new model, it will be a big challenge because there is a mindset issue. If I say ‘brainwashing’ it will be a bad word but I am using it to convey the flavour of what I have in mind. They (Workers) have to be told that if this model continues the way it has been continuing there will be pressure on wages. More wages brings pressure on margins, which means more estates will close down, more estates will lose money… the same vicious circle will go on.

    The KDHP model didn’t really work. I believe that Tata companies were not able to pay dividends beyond 2015 because the industry itself was in trouble. 

    As much as the workforce needs to be informed and educated, what would be the producers response to this model?

    Dharmaraj: Before we address employees we need to address the producers. My own experience so far, of being a propounder of this concept, is that there have been some progressive employers who are looking at it positively, as a holistic and sustainable way forward. A lot of them will be skeptical about it. For the simple reason that they all think that this land is an asset. To my mind this land is no longer an asset. These lands, across India in tea growing areas, these large land holdings were exempt from Land Ceiling Act (LCA) because they were large organised industries. About five plantations, including tea, coffee, rubber, cocoa, were exempt from the LCA and were allowed to be held in land banks. The original ownership pattern differs from state to state. Kerala and West Bengal are leasehold lands while Tamil Nadu and Assam are freehold lands. Irrespective of what the title is, one stipulation which has made them qualify for the exemption from land ceiling is that they are mandated to use it only for plantation. In other words, you cannot alienate it for real estate or any other purpose. An asset gets its value only when it’s transactional. When it’s not transactional and when you can’t monetise it, where’s the value? It’s only on paper. So I think it’s a bit of a fallacy. I know it’s a mindset issue. People need to be made to look at stark reality. I am convinced the going forward plantation has to simply survive on operational margins. Gone are the days when you can say you are a landowner and give it a value and put it on your balance sheet… It’s a mirage, it’s no longer valid. 

    Land ownership is increasingly under a cloud. And also the ownership pattern. Before the 1970s these were pure line plantation companies. They made money, they put it back in plantation business, it grew like that. Today, after the FERA rules and ownership shareholding was mandated to be diluted, especially the English held, sterling companies changed ownership and became part of Indian multi business groups. To them, it’s yet another business and ultimately it will work on which business in their portfolio gives the highest returns. Even the management structure of plantations has undergone change, and therefore there is a crying need for a sustainable model. 

    How will the model you propose impact quality and therefore pricing?

    Dharmaraj: Therein lies the challenges. It’s important to form a cooperative unit, ideally a group of estates supplying raw material to a factory becomes a cooperative unit. Now that cooperative unit is necessary in order to maintain the organised cohesive nature of this business enabling economies of scale, economies of efficiency, which tend to get a little diluted when there is fragmented ownership. Safeguards have to be built in. The technical guidance and supervision of these holdings should continue to remain with the body corporate so that they control the output, control the quality and provide a price incentive for better quality leaves, which even today is being done in the Bought Leaf business. Many factories give extra money for better quality leaf. Those to my mind are manageable issues. I am not taking them for granted but with proper agreements in place I think those can be achieved.

    What about labour itself? The other recurring concern is shortage of labour. How would this model address that?

    Dharmaraj: Just the other day I was checking about the workforce in Kerala. We were under the impression that the workforce was 3-4 lakh (300,000-400,000). I was surprised to get the number as 40,000. That’s how much the number has dwindled in time. That’s because the younger generation don’t want to work in plantations. Even if they were to get lesser earnings elsewhere they would prefer to work in white collar jobs than in plantations.

    Shortage of labour is a huge issue. But I imagine the decentralised model will itself address the issue. Drawing back on my experience, when you frame them over a 8-hour period, the output is restricted mentally. When I was a young manager, once – without permission from the management and I got rapped on the knuckles for doing so – I said I am giving you flexi time. In an estate of 500 hectares with x number of workers, you can plan how much has to be covered each day. So I said, “As long as you harvest the fixed area, you can go home. They started going home by 3 o’clock, 2 o’clock and at one point, they were done by mid day. They are physically and mentally capable of higher output. You need to create the right working conditions for that. You can give people two types of incentive – money or time. In this case time was given as incentive. And it was working. Women could go look after their children. They have a kitchen garden and they had time to work on it. When you are owners you put in heart and soul in work you deliver.

    In this model, in a way, a flexi working time will come because they are no longer employees governed by labour laws. They are their own owners, masters of their time. They know that green leaf of only a certain quality will be accepted or that this is the quality that will give them X+. They will adapt to it. It’s a spinoff benefit of this scheme that is driven in terms of leading to greater worker output.

    How realistic is the adoption of this model?

    Dharmaraj: Like all changes, everyone is not going to dance with joy. A lot of homework needs to be done. I have been speaking to progressive companies on this. Some are very keen to see this taken forward. There are many questions to be answered but there are progressive companies are willing to look at it carefully. It’s possible to find volunteers, and I have suggested doing this on a modular basis, maybe select a geographical area, establish the working principles of such a model. 

    This model will be particularly useful in reopening closed estates. There are many in Kerala and West Bengal. They are in bad shape, in the sense they are in economic and social disarray. What has happened here is that local power groups have taken over. In a way what we proposed is happening there by default but not in an organised fashion. Employees have taken over the land because employers have not been paying wages, they have stopped production, they have abandoned plantations. But what has happened is that some local leaders, or trade unions or local mafia become the controlling point. They make money, and the real reward and price don’t go into the hands of the workmen. 

    We are talking about a model that is deliberate, that is preplanned, that is blessed by the body corporate, that is blessed by the government, that is blessed by the workforce and trade unions who represent them. I am sure the government and trade unions will see this as a great step forward. 

    The plantation model is outdated. It still has a colonial ring to it. The dwellings of workers are called lines… I know that owners give them facilities. Many companies provide what they are mandated. But with all that, it still gives the idea of being a labour camp. Whereas give them a facility to create a dwelling for themselves, with an area earmarked for growing vegetables, then there is an emotive connect to the whole thing. It’s very difficult to quantify that kind of emotive connection. I think these are the things to be sold to the workforce. Someone asked, why should they opt for this when they are assured of wages? This is where information sharing and communication becomes important. If we continue the same way, more estates will be abandoned, companies will be unable to meet obligations. If we don’t check it with a disruptive model, five years down the line the industry will be in shambles, if not already, as portrayed by parts of Kerala and West Bengal. 

    It’s a reality we are looking at, and not just in India. The plantation business is in trouble in Kenya and Sri Lanka also.

    On my part, I feel I owe it to the industry that has sustained me over four decades. It needs a breakthrough and if I can contribute to that, I will be gratified. 

    *India became a WTO member in 1995

    EDITOR’S NOTE:

    K. Mathew Abraham, managing director at Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (KDHP), asked that Tea Biz post this rejoinder.

    Abraham writes that “Contrary to what is stated in the interview above, we would like to clarify that KDHP is one of the most successful large tea plantation companies in South India with an annual production of 25 million kilos of tea.

    “Proof of this can be seen from KDHP’s performance since its formation more than 15 years ago. KDHP has been continuously generating profits, barring two years and KDHP has paid dividends every year.

    “As further proof of the success of the model, we would like to highlight that plucking productivity has increased by more than 70% since inception, which is a clear indication of the involvement of the employees in this success story. In 2015, KDHP was ranked No. 1 for employee participation and involvement by Great Place to Work Institute India.  

    “Most interestingly, the communication cascade undertaken during formation of the company resulted in more than 98% of the workforce voluntarily becoming company shareholders with an employee director and a staff director nominated to the Board — probably the first of its kind in the industry.”

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    Aravinda Anantharaman

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  • Plastic cups out, clay cups in at 400 Indian train stations

    BENGALURU, INDIA—The Indian railways is the largest rail network in Asia. Every day 12,617 trains run along the length and breadth of the country covering 7,172 stations. On a normal, non-Covid day, they would collectively ferry 23 million passengers.

    A month ago, the Indian Railways announced that they would replace plastic cups with the kulhad, as an attempt to reduce single-use plastic and replace it with the eco-friendly kulhad. The project is being launched at 400 railway stations to begin with.

    Indian potter making small pot or Diya for Diwali with clay on potters wheel in his small factory. Manufacturing traditional handicraft with clay.

    A kulhad is quite simply a terracotta clay cup, unglazed and without any handles. Replacing the plastic cup with the kulhad offers a more eco-friendly alternative. But it can generate employment and income to potters across the country – said to be potentially in the range of 2 million potters. And it is viewed as bringing back something inherently Indian – terracotta utensils that date back centuries!

    But this is not the first time that the kulhad has been considered in place of plastic cups. Nearly 20 years ago, then railway minister had introduced the kulhad for the same reasons. It fizzled out rather quickly. Reasons were that it cost more, many customers didn’t find it appealing or hygienic, and finally, demand outstripped supply.

    Still, something’s got to be done. Because even if every passenger drinks only one cup of chai on a train journey, that’s a mind boggling amount of plastic!

    Jaya Jaitley, politician and an expert on handicrafts, was quoted in the Guardian as saying, for the idea to work this time around, the government must allow for the design to vary across the country, ensure a steady supply of clay to potters, and provide feeder centres near major railway stations.

    However, the kulhad is not without detractors. They argue that it, too, is a single use cup, and that terracotta can take decades to degrade. So unless reused, the kulhad too will add to the landfill.

    Tea and trains in India, are one of those classic pairings. What remains to be seen is if the kulhad endure and add to the charm of a cuppa on the train? And if it really is the alternative to plastic.

    —Aravinda Anantharaman reporting, Bengaluru, India

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    Aravinda Anantharaman

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