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Fading memories of the Raj in the tea gardens of Assam

Richard Orange

Wednesday, 2nd July 2008

Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history

There is not much to distinguish Dhanesheva Kurmi from the rest of the crowd at the Hautely Tea Estate, a remote garden an hour and a half’s bumpy drive from the Assamese town of Jorhat.

This is a little unfair: at Hautely, Sarder has big plans to invest. He wants to spend about £30,000 a month over ten years to bring the garden up to scratch, replanting 100 hectares with the highest quality tea bushes. ‘You come back after two years,’ he says. ‘You’ll see the difference.’

But at the Tocklai Tea Research Centre in Jorhat, Dr B.K. Goswami agrees that in the last 20 years there has been little replanting. For a tea bush, production peaks at between 15 and 40 years: many bushes in Assam today are more than 100 years old and more than a third date from British rule. ‘At present, the replantation rate of the tea industry is very poor,’ Goswami says. ‘Less than 1 per cent a year. We want to get it to 5 per cent a year, and that will require a lot of government financial assistance.’ Now that state subsidies are available, Goswami thinks Assam is entering a new era. ‘The first generation of plantation started from 1823, the second generation was around 1950. This is the third generation.’

And with it is coming a new generation of planters. Sarder is convinced that the commercially switched-on owners like himself hold the keys to the industry’s future. ‘Tea is like a black diamond,’ he says. ‘Only a diamond-dealer can see what the true value of a diamond is, and only a tea-trader can see the true value of tea.’

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