Dear Friends,
Tea Board of India, with one of the most sprawling Offices in Kolkatta, does not even provide promotional posters to visitors, even if they want to pay for them. All the promotional posters and material is instead distributed to known friends and influential people, regardless of their love for the most romantic beverage of all, TEA.
There is more than fashion ( or Old Fashion, as some might say ), more than pretention, more than money, more than pretention and more than commerce to this eternal drink of all time. The romance, the emotion, the sense of elation one feels after drinking a cup of Tea comes not from any of its flamboyance, but from its sheer humbleness.
To understand this one needs to observe a plantation worker, carrying on with her plucking activity in a heavy downpour, carrying her infant child in a sling and at the same time hanging a basket from her head. From morning to evening, AND, IT IS NOT MONOTONOUS. They make the first organised group of women workers India. These women today are the most exploited lot, as the men find it fashionable to run hooch shops, pan and bidi parlours, pimping and to become trade union leaders, while fleecing the women and the plantation for Ration, Medical Benefits, Housing and Infrastructure. Can you imagine one woman supporting 12 ’dependants’ members including 3 husbands? Tea Board has no policy on limiting Dependants.
Then you need to observe the Tea Planter at work, chasing Cows from his estate, as they bring in mites with them which multiply on the Tea Bush and leads to use of expensive and often environmently damaging pesticides, while reducing the yeild and thus reducing the earnings of not only the Plantation Owners but the Estate workers too. On the scne comes the non working ’dependant’, with a khukhri and stabs the Planter, as he needs to live off the money made by selling the Milk from this Cow - to drink hooch. Tea Board has no policy on Limiting /abuse of estates frail infrastructures.
You observe the Catalougues of auction Brokers, Front Cover, Back cover and One page in between, with one estates Tea printed on it, In its Silver jubilee Year! Tea Board is a body under the auspices of The Ministry of Commerce.
You could also find a Tea Man, brewing infusions in hundreds and Tasting Day in and Day Out, its his passion, noting small nuances and recommending steps to enhance quality. And the Government encourages unorganised farming, planting of substanderd Clones and ’Jats", going by hectrerage and Yeild alone, QUALITY ? ? The Taster gives up tasting and starts learning economics. God Bless the Tea Board!