Durgabari tea garden estate on the outskirts of Agartala.(Reuters)

Agartala, Aug. 5: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has turned into a nightmare for the industrial sector, particularly for the tea industry in Tripura.

A major part of the 12,157 strong workforce of the tea sector comprising 55 functioning gardens, leaves duty in the garden to work on NREGA schemes with job cards.

“This NREGA has become a curse for the tea gardens. There are gardens in Dhalai district like Jagannathpur, Mahabir and Ramdurlavpur where 80 per cent of the workers leave duty in the garden to join worker under the job scheme. They put in two to three hours of work at the most and earn Rs 100 or more,” the secretary of Tea Association of India, P.K. Sarkar, said.

The current annual production in Tripura’s gardens — 8 million kg — can increase substantially with full deployment of the labour force but NREGA and other Union government-sponsored schemes are luring away workers.

Tea cultivation in Tripura began a century ago during the reign of King Birendra Kishore Manikya (1909-1923) after the industry had gained a foothold in Sylhet district of Bangladesh. In order to keep the British planters at bay, the king had made preferential land allotment to Bengali entrepreneurs to set up estates, granting tax concessions.

The industry in Tripura had languished behind quality tea produced in Assam and Bengal because of poor quality of soil and non-induction of technology and fertiliser but it had managed to pull on.

The second phase of insurgency in Tripura (1993-2003), however, had posed the first existential threat to the industry as altogether six tea personnel, including three leading planters, had been kidnapped and killed by the militants between 1996 and 2002. The situation was also worsened by rampant extortion threats by the rebels.

Having weathered the effects of insurgency, the industry appeared to have been set for growth since 2003 but a slump in the international tea market exacerbated by lack of adequate assistance from the government has retarded the much-needed investment and development in this sector.

“The annual return from tea auctions varies hovers around Rs 64 crore but it could have been much more had the industry been given fertilisers at subsidised rates and irrigation benefits. These things have remained elusive despite our persistent demands over 20 years,” Sarkar said.

He also pointed out that the withdrawal of 90 per cent transport subsidy by the Centre and the Supreme Court’s order banning transportation of goods beyond 8 tonnes by six-wheeler trucks have dealt a big blow to the industry. “The transportation cost for taking the tea to the auction centre in Guwahati is quite high but there are other serious problems like low availability of coal for factories in gardens, fertilisers and irrigation facilities. Unless these are addressed, the condition of the industry will go from bad to worse,” said Sarkar, adding that quality improvement was a major problem because of lack of investment.

Unlike the dismal scenario in the mainstream tea industry, 5,000 small tea growers, who produce and sell tea leaves by cultivating them on plots of land measuring 2 to 5 acres, and 11 co-operative gardens have been running well.

While the small growers sell their leaves to larger gardens or to the Tripura Tea Development Corporation, the cooperative-run gardens dispatch their produce to auction centres.

The Durgabari Co-operative Tea Garden illustrates the success of the co-operative system in running gardens as the management give 20 per cent annual bonus, besides regular payment of wages, free housing and medical benefits to the labourers.

“We now have a processing centre of our own and besides processing our own tea, we earn extra by processing tea produced in the six other gardens in Sadar (North),” Panu Mazumder, chairman of the co-operative, said.

He, however, blamed estate owners for lack of development in the larger gardens.

“They can’t utilise entire plots of land given on lease by the government and most of them do not go for necessary replanting of tea saplings to replace old ones. The private owners must make fresh investments and introduce modern techniques,” Mazumder said.