The Hindu Business Line : Bengal tea panel may finalise report next week

THE one-man committee set up by the West Bengal Government to examine the problems of the tea industry in the State, is expected to finalise its report by next week.

State Government officials told Business Line that although the committee was set up in September with the mandate of looking into the long-term issues, it will also address itself to the short-term problems plaguing the industry in the State.

However, indications were that there would be no drastic recommendations. The committee was in favour of making suggestions which could be implemented, sources said.

The suggestions would most likely be divided into three sections for action. One would be for the State Government, another for the Centre and a third section would be for the managements and the lending institutions.

"The report may not spell out miracle cures to reopen the 20 closed gardens in the State, but it would address itself to the problems so that the ailing gardens could be revived," sources said.

There are about 287 tea estates in West Bengal, where tea is grown in the Dooars region in north Bengal apart from Darjeeling. The Tea Board estimated the number of gardens in the State at 1550 in 2001 which included the small gardens too.

While the tea industry in general was faced with slow increase in demand, coupled with rising costs and declining prices, it is the small growers who are giving the organised sector very tough competition according to industry department sources.

This fact is also acknowledged by the Tea Board, which said that the small growers had registered a tremendous growth, increasing its share in all-India production from 6.92 per cent in 1991 to 19.91 per cent in 2001.

Some of the Left Front partners have long being clamouring for some governmental action to save the tea garden workers, with those working in the closed gardens now facing starvation and eking out a difficult existence in the gardens where even power connections had been severed. Matters came to a fore with the incident in a garden in the Dooars where 19 people were killed over the issue of employing outsiders.