GUWAHATI, AUG 30: Assam's 25,000-ODD small tea growers dumped 1.5 lakh tonnes of green leaf tea in the Brahmaputra. The growers have been facing a severe crisis during the past few weeks, with the bigger tea companies abruptly lowering the price of green leaf tea. For them, the glut meant that it was better to dump the lot into the river as a mark of protest instead of having to sell it for unbelievably low prices.Such has been the disappointment among the homestead tea growers that they also blocked the National Highway in as many as five Upper Assam tea-growing districts for six hours yesterday, while the All Assam Small Tea Growers' Association is soon coming out with a more intensive agitational programme.The price of green leaf tea has nose-dived from Rs 10 a kg to less than Rs three during the past few days, with the small tea-growers - mostly educated youths who have taken to growing tea in their homesteads - seeing red.But while the Small Tea Growers' Association put the blame on the big tea companies and complained that the latter were trying to exploit the small growers, the Assam Tea Planters' Association (ATPA) has claimed that the price of manufactured tea was anyway falling pretty fast in the entire country.According to former ATPA president Prabhat Bezbaruah, while there has been a general slackening of demand for tea, the abundance of green tea followingthe arrival of large number of small tea growers were also equally responsible for the situation.However, it is also a fact that the big companies that have taken to producing packet teas now virtually control the entire tea economy, compelling others - big and small - to follow their diktats. As the giant companies also lift a major portion of the tea, whether through auction or through direct purchase, they are the ones calling the shots.All Assam Small Tea Growers' Association general secretary Hemanta Gohain directly blamed Hindustan Lever Ltd for having allegedly hatched a conspiracy against other growers. It was HLL's gardens which suddenly reduced the price of green leaf they procure from the small growers, putting them into dire straits. ``How can we supply them green leaf at less than one-third the prevailing price?'' Gohain asked.While the tea companies grow their own green leaf, the arrival of the small growers in the scene has meant that the firms buy from them as well, in view of the fact that the production cost of such leaf is much less.There are a number of factories too which are owned and run by individuals who do not grow tea at all, but manufacture tea by purchasing green leaf from the small growers in the tea-growing districts of Upper Assam.
