GUWAHATI
INDIA'S beleaguered tea industry today stressed the need for a regulatory authority to monitor quality of the beverage to help arrest the sharp plunge in tea prices and save planters from ruin.

"We are in urgent need of some strict quality control mechanism to help save the Indian tea industry from collapsing," Abani Borgohain, the chairman of the Assam Committee of the Indian Tea Association (ITA), said.

"Unless we are able to produce quality tea, the future of the industry looks very bleak," Borgohain said.

In the weekly auctions, prices of tea failed to attract firm prices with huge stocks remaining unsold during the better part of this year - a kg of top quality Assam tea was selling at least Rs 20-25 lower than the amount it fetched two years back.

Assam tea earlier was selling anything between Rs 90-100 a kg.

"The industry is facing an unprecedented crisis and we are heading for even worse days ahead if the market trend does not change," Robin Barthakur, the secretary-general of ITA's Assam chapter, said.

Industry captains say a decline in quality of Indian tea has led to the crash in prices and the demand going down. Assam accounts for 55 per cent of the country's total annual production of 806 million kg.

"We have seen during the past few years hundreds of small growers taking to tea cultivation without bothering about the finer nuances of producing quality beverage thereby putting at stake the reputation of the industry," said B C Sharma, a senior planter.

The Tea Research Association in eastern Assam, the biggest tea-testing laboratory in the world, said it had all the technical expertise to help growers to produce quality tea, besides acting as a quality control watchdog.

"We are ready to take up the responsibility of monitoring quality control," said Borgohain, who is also the chairman of the TRA.

The Tea Board of India is officially entrusted with the task of monitoring quality of tea but industry officials say the Board is almost defunct.

The Assam government is soon expected to convene a meeting of tea industry captains, experts, besides federal commerce ministry officials, to chalk out strategies to stave off the threat.

Small and medium-sized owners are so worried by the price trend in the weekly auctions that they have begun to voice doubts over the economic viability of growing tea in the near future.

"Gardens in hundreds were incurring heavy losses due to the slowdown with huge stocks of tea lying unsold over a long period," said Debeswar Bora, the secretary of the Assam Tea Planters Association. "Soon many gardens would be forced to close down.

"Meanwhile, production has been halted since December 1 after the Consultative Committee of Plantation Associations, the apex body representing 2,000 gardens in Assam, West Bengal and Tripura, aimed at clearing an existing glut in the market and reviving the gasping industry by pushing up prices.There are some one million workers employed directly and another 10 million who are indirectly dependent on the industry.

Tea captains have exhorted the Indian finance ministry for both short- and long-term steps to bail out the industry from the current mess with fiscal sops, including excise duties waivers and suspension of state tax on green leaves.