G C S NEGI VIMLA BISHT

REKINDLING THE BRITISH-ERA ROMANCE WITH TEA CAN HELP UTTARAKHAND REVITALISE ITS ECONOMY AND RESOLVE THE LONGDRAWN-OUT MIGRATION CRISIS AND

THE DESERTED villages of Uttarakhand are springing back to life. Some 330,000 people have returned home after decades due to the nationwide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19. The government estimates that about 45 per cent of them would stay back. To retain the workers Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has announced a plethora of schemes and provisions (see ‘The hills are coming alive’, Down To Earth, 1-15 September). While there is a great deal of emphasis on the farm sector, one crop that holds a winwin opportunity is the cultivation and processing of the world’s most favourite beverage: tea.

Though Uttarakhand is not known as a tea-growing state, it has a long tryst with the evergreen shrub, named in scientific lexicon. Over 150 years ago when tea cultivation began in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal and several other states in south India, a consignment of 20,000 tea seedlings from Kolkata had also reached the Uttarakhand region. In the 1880s, as many as 63 sprawling tea gardens spread over 4,428 hectares (ha) in the region, registering a production of 770,270 kg in 1897 and each employing over 500 people. Some of the largest tea gardens were Arcadia Tea Estate in Dehradun, spanning 486 ha, Malla Katyur (205 ha) and Kausani in the Kumaun hills (158 ha). Despite the glorious beginning, tea industry in Uttarakhand faced a steady decline towards the beginning of the 20th century. TEA POINTS

Arcadia today manufactures just 70,000 kg of green tea in a season, compared to 3,500,000 kg a few decades ago.

The industry’s decline became particularly evident after Independence due to factors including migration of skilled labour, poor technical knowledge among the local people, rampant encroachment on tea estates, market competition, shortage of fuel for tea processing, the absence of good transport facilities, lack of silvicultural management of tea gardens and invasion of weeds like

Soon, many of the tea gardens switched to growing temperate fruits like apple, peaches, plums, pears, apricots and citrus.

The government reintroduced tea in the Uttarakhand hills in 1987 by taking culturable wastelands on lease and reviving the abandoned British-era tea gardens. In 2004, soon after Uttarakhand was created a separate state, the Uttarakhand Tea Development Board (UTDB) was set up with the job to promote eco-friendly, organic and quality tea plantations over 9,000 ha. This target, if pursued in the right manner, can help change the fate of Uttarakhand’s ghost villages.

Researchers at the G B Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment, Almora, have conducted studies to understand how tea can be made profitable for small farmers. The agro-climatic conditions of Uttarakhand are not as suitable as that in the northeast for growing tea. So, most plantations are located at an altitude of 1,400-1,700 metres above the sea level, where they suffer from two main constraints: poor soil fertility and low soil moisture for most parts of the year. So first, it is important for the government to promote tea clones suitable for various agro-climatic regions of Uttarakhand.

The second step is to identify locally produced tea varieties like Nandadevi and promote them in a way that they can compete with the other established brands.

One way of doing this is to promote local varieties as organic. The researchers say this also works in favour of small farmers. They conducted an experiment with the UPASI-9 variety of tea using three fertiliser treatments: nitrogen-phosphorus-and-potassium (NPK), bio-fertiliser and farmyard manure (FYM). The variety has been recommended for warm valleys of Uttarakhand due to its drought tolerance, frost resistance, high yield and ability to withstand slightly high pH. The researchers found that the profitability of UPASI-9 variety is the highest when grown using FYM, which can be easily prepared by small farmers in their cattle-sheds for free. Cattle manure not only contains high amounts of potassium, a major nutrient for tea plant, but also has the acid humus that helps in moisture absorption. This can also help shape the microbial composition and recruit beneficial bacteria into the rhizosphere of tea, thereby leading to improved tea quality and reduced heavy metal contents in tea leaves.

Tea plantations in Uttarakhand gain their full potential only after seven years and profitable yields are harvested after 12 years. To ensure that plantations are remunerative right from the initial years, intercropping must be promoted with legumes, ginger and turmeric. The researchers estimate that these crops can help the farmers earn 54-115 per cent of the income from tea. Planting of insect-pest repellent trees like

FARMERS IN UTTARAKHAND HAD ABANDONED AGRICULTURE BECAUSE OF MONKEY AND WILD BOAR MENANCE. SINCE TEA DOES NOT GET RAIDED BY THESE ANIMALS, THIS CAN ACT AS AN INCENTIVE FOR THE FARMERS TO RETURN TO FIELDS

and fodder crops like lemongrass and Guatemala grass would also enhance the overall returns from tea gardens. Besides, most farmers had abandoned their fields because of monkey and wild boar menace. Since tea does not get raided by these animals, the fact itself may act as an incentive to return to their fields.

OFFICIALLY, THERE is no poverty in India, one can argue. This is because we don’t know who is poor. We have not counted the poor in the country for nearly a decade now—another case of governance mala fide. The one we did last year was junked by the government, probably because it showed a poverty level that is politically not suitable for the “New India” slogan.

But why do we need to talk about poverty, or now? First, because we have stopped taking stock of poverty, as mentioned above. This makes it difficult to assess the impacts of the hundreds of development programmes India implements, ironically, to eradicate poverty but without knowing about it. However, our development schemes continue to target a section of people who are termed as those living below the poverty line (BPL), identified years ago. Second, going by all economic indicators of recent years, it is certain that a large section of the country remains poor or is not able to reach a decent standard of living. Third, if despite investing so much political and monetary capital, the development indicators are not positive, then we need to reassess our antipoverty programmes. This is also because there is a section of the population in certain geographies that remains poor despite decades of focused intervention.

Besides, we are now hit by the economically disruptive COVID-19 pandemic. We might be able to stop counting the cases in future, but its nonhealth impacts are gigantic and can have the hydra effect. There are several global estimates on the economic impacts of the pandemic on countries. All of them agree on one point: poverty is going to increase across the world. Though these studies struggle to estimate the economic impact on India, given the absence of data on poverty, assessments show that the country would add at least 8-10 million new poor. It means India will soon become a country with a significant level of poverty—all this is going by the decade-old estimates.

Add to this the recent trend of acute rural distress that impacts those who are already poor. This new shock would lead to a pandemic of poverty. For at least four to five months the majority of India’s informal workers—who constitute the majority of India’s workforce—didn’t earn at all. For a poor, this is the entry point to that dreaded vicious cycle of chronic poverty. If you are already poor and you face a shock that takes away your capacity to survive, you tend to live off borrowings. In future, whatever you earn goes into repaying that mounting debt. Basically, you continue to remain poor no matter how well or how hard you work.

So, how big would be the size of India’s poor population now? We can’t precisely estimate, again, for the lack of official data. But in recent years the dipping rural income growth rate, the main occupation of agriculture turning into a loss-making venture, and the non-availability of non-farm jobs in rural areas have fuelled migration to urban areas. It means poverty is no more rural-centric; it has also spread to urban centres. With the COVID-19 pandemic, impacting both rural and urban areas, poverty is now a pan-India phenomenon.

This is why India needs to shed the false impression of an emerging economy, almost without poverty, and resort to its

slogan of the early 1970s. Simply focusing on an outdated BPL population and directing development doles to them as “beneficiaries” will not eradicate poverty. Poverty is a concern for both rural and urban areas, for people below and above the poverty line. As an economy, if it is not addressed now it would undo whatever we have achieved in the past 70 years. It may just turn out to be an excuse for a future leader to whitewash this criminal governance oversight.

Anti-poverty programmes must be universal, and not just based on a below or above poverty line matrix

COURSE COORDINATOR