Emerging Unorganized Sector of Tea Economy in India

It is an established fact that there is a paradigm shift in tea economy in India, i.e. from colonial corporate ownership to small-scale individual ownership production system. The geography of tea plantations have expanded from a few traditional tea growing states to fifteen states in India since 1990s. Almost all the hill states of North-East India grow small-scale tea today. The typical characteristics of plantation villages changed from homogeneous villages to heterogeneous villages which is found to be inclusive in character. As per Tea Board of India (2018–19), there are 210,225 smallholders with tea cultivation areas of 215,886 ha contributing roughly around 50–55% of tea production. In most of the cases, they are the first-generation unemployed youth into tea cultivation and enterprise development. On the other hand, the organized tea sector has 1569 tea estates with tea area of 420,670 ha. The labour relations are well defined in organized sector and covered under the Plantation Labour Act. But in the unorganized sector, the labour relations are evolving and new set of organizations like Bought-Leaf Factories (BLFs), Tea Producing Societies (SHGs), Small Tea Growers Associations and State-Level Associations, etc., are being emerged for the safeguard of livelihoods across the country and in India’s North-East. There are around 5.64 lakh smallholder families and 2.51 million people are associated with the unorganized sector of tea industry in India (Hannan, 2017). Around 1.25 million workers employed directly and an estimated 2.50 million people are indirectly dependant in organized sector of tea industry today. It needs to be mentioned that the quality of employment in organized tea industry differs from smallholder sector popularly known as Unorganized Sector. Livelihoods in this sector seem to be more vulnerable and their engagement with the market has series of middlemen and buffer zones. The group approach or collectivization in the form of Tea Cooperatives or Self-Help Groups is yet to gain popular recognition and acceptance model by smallholders. Therefore, there is a lack of confidence among growers to establish their credentials and visibility in the market particularly in government-led tea auctions. The question of under-recognition and low level of entrepreneurship skills always push them into a situation where buyer-driven market fixes the prices of their product (intermediary product, i.e. green leaf). It has an impact and reflection on their quality of employment, insecure livelihoods and a compromise to overall quality of life and unexplored potentials and possible protection within the tea economy.