Alternative crops in Asom tea gardens

Guwahati, Oct 30: Tata Tea Ltd's gardens in Asom will soon earn direct profits for not only its owners and management, but for other employees, labourers and local entrepreneurs, with the company's innovative scheme for alternative cropping in its tea estates.

Tata Tea Limited has plans in place to undertake alternative cropping in its numerous gardens in the state, where the employees, labourers, management as well as entrepreneurs would have equal stake.

Preliminary work for execution of the plan has already been set in motion, with managing director of Tata Tea Ltd P Chiganporia holding formal talks with Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Saturday.

Under the new plan, the unused or non-usable land in the tea gardens would be utilised for cultivation of alternative crops, including various types of vegetables, and fishery and floriculture activities. Alternative cropping has already been started in the company's gardens at Borjan and Hathikhuli on an experimental basis.

The Managing Director informed Mr Gogoi that the company was planning to promote entrepreneurship among the various categories of employees in the gardens as well as encourage local people to come forward for investment.

The employees and labourers would be provided with interest free loans for buying equity under the scheme, he added.

The move was expected to help the company in ensuring quality tea production as well as looking after the welfare needs of its employees, with proper utilisation of the land which had so far remained barren inside the estates.

Mr Chiganporia maintained that besides creating job opportunities, the new scheme would also lead to a rise in the income of the investors, who would mostly be the worker section of the gardens.

According to a survey by Tata Tea, monthly income of the employees-labourers under this joint ownership/investment scheme would increase from Rs 1,800 to Rs 5,500.

Accordingly, saving capacity of the concerned people per month would rise from Rs 112 to Rs 1,312.

The move was expected to give an impetus to the revival of the tea industry in the state, which was slowly picking up from a long slow-down in profits.

UNI