KAMALPUR, Feb 6 (TIWN): The days of terror, bloodshed and the resulting pandemonium whic are continuing since three decades, have almost destroyed the century-old tea industry of the state. The situation turned so grave that the kidnapping of tea estate officials and laborers by the insurgent groups like NLFT and ATTF have become very common here. Many officials and employees have simply denied work in the tea estates at that period. However, in recent years the situation has changed significantly and all the 58 tea gardens reached the optimum level of production of one crore kg of tea per year. According to the information of the Tea Board, the state put almost 6, 400 hectares of land under cultivation and the total garden area for cultivation remained 14, 000 hectares. The hike in the industry also secured fifth position of the state in tea production after Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Besides, small growers also added to the quantity of the production.

 Again, the state governmental organization, The Tripura tea Development Corporation owned 14 gardens. 

 Tea from the state now got exported to Iran, Russia and America through Tea Board.But among this vibrant and bright scenario, a darkness started to loom large over the industry here. The producers from the state used to produce mainly the CTC tea. Reportedly, same situation prevailed in Cachar of Assam.

But, this inclination towards CTC started to result massive jolt for the industry here. In recent past, Kenya introduced its top quality CTC blend in the international market. As a result, the price of Indian CTC decreased significantly. Indian exporters now found it a hard nut to crack in the international market to cope with the international situation and the price of CTC decreased.  Naturally, this decline in price hit the national auction market. And as a result, the price of CTC tea in the auction market reduced to the extent of 75 rupees to 95 rupees per kg.

In this situation, to cope with the international demands, the producers stressed upon the improvement of quality. In this move, emphasis got put upon Orthodox blend. Besides, green tea, organic tea and bio-tea also got produced as produced as those blends enjoyed a good demand and prospect in foreign market. But in this venture to upgrade quality, quantity of production reduced significantly. Leaving the giants of the industry in the state, all the other producers suffered 10% to 20% decline in quantity of production in comparison with the last year, claimed some tea estate employees having dignified posts in several tea estates in the state.

Where traditional blend of CTC suffered, shift to Orthodox blend not yet achieved completely. Besides, the new ventures like green tea, bio-tea, organic tea etc. with wide international market remained a distant dream to be reached. Here the activities of the Tea Board needed to be mentioned. Tea Board provided the producers with two types subsidies namely SPTF & QPDS. In the first scheme of subsidy, facilities got entitled to the producers for development and technological advancement and new plantation etc. And the QPDS subsidy got entitled to those producers who used to export 25% of their total production yearly. But neither of the medium producers nor any from the small producers of the state could export their products. Lack of connectivity with international market, which might be set within a short period through Bangladesh, deepened the problem. And along with the decrease in production, the unavailability of a complete subsidy scheme made the medium and small estates suffer economic loss in the present fiscal. Hence, in this state of so-called good governance and industry-friendly policies, the major part of the tea producers struggled hard for economic advancement and upliftment.