Kangra tea industry in deep crisis

Ravinder Sood

Palampur, July 22

Tea production in Kangra is down by almost 60 per cent this year. The 170-year-old tea industry has been badly hit by adverse weather conditions, ageing plants and stiff competition put up by tea producers of Sri Lanka, Kenya and China.

Until 2001, Kangra gardens produced a bumper crop. The yield (mostly Chinese hybrid varieties) has come down to 5,00,000 kg from 17,00,000 kg, almost a 65 per cent drop and almost 50 per cent lower than comparative figures in the Nilgiris, Assam and Darjeeling.

According to the state Agriculture Department, more than 65 per cent of the 25,000 hectares area under tea now has been abandoned in Palampur, Baijnath and adjoining Mandi district.

All the four cooperative tea factories located at Palampur, Baijnath, Sidhwari and Bir are facing huge losses and three of them have been closed or leased out to private parties.The planters themselves are not getting their regular payments. The reason is: Last year, the stock remained unsold for months and was finally disposed of at throwaway prices.

The state government has so far failed to come to the rescue of tea growers. The state government has already withdrawn the subsidies being given to tea growers on fertilisers, new tea plants, implements and insecticides. This is one of the reasons behind a large number of tea gardens being abandoned in the valley. Earlier, the tea industry was being looked after by the state Industries Department, but the government has now assigned the job to the state Agriculture Department, which has failed to deliver the goods and is responsible for the present crisis.

A number of tea planters told The Tribune that the focus of the state government was only to help and finance apple growers of upper Himachal and the government was least bothered about the Kangra tea industry, which was on the verge of closure. They said the state government had meted out step-motherly treatment to the Kangra tea industry in the past 30 years. They have called on Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh a number of times in this regard, but to no avail. Today, they are left with no alternative except to abandon their tea plantations.

The government’s efforts to revive the units have helped only Palampur, but here too, the production of tea has shown a big fall. The Bir factory has shut down, while two others — at Sidhwari and Baijnath — have been privatised. To clear the arrears, the government recently converted loans as equity share.

Till some time ago, Kangra tea was in great demand in Europe, Central Asia and Australia.

Shanta Kumar, MP from Kangra while interacting with The Tribune, said the Central Government was ready to revive the Kangra tea industry, but there was no initiative from the state government. The Union Government had asked the state a number of times to come out with a plan for setting up big tea units in the state, reviving tea gardens and providing land for new plantations. Unfortunately, the state government had not responded to the Centre. Even during the UPA regime, the commerce ministry wrote a number of letters to the state in this regard, but all in vain.