Abstract
Dealing with the crisis in the India’s tea plantation sector in terms of falling prices following the trade reforms since 1991, this chapter examines the impacts of trade reforms on the sector and discusses major challenges which might affect the sustainability and competitiveness of the industry in the emerging context of global market integration along with India’s increased engagement in bilateral and multi-lateral trade agreements. The need for policy and institutional interventions has been underscored to tackle structural imperfections and market uncertainties affecting the Indian tea sector; an important policy mechanism is to promote value-adding processing of tea so that the stake of the small tea producers is enhanced by strengthening their capabilities through provision of state-of-the-art tea processing technology.
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Notes
- 1.
Established in 1953 under the administrative jurisdiction of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, the Tea Board has facilitated area expansion, production and productivity enhancement through various R&D and institutional support measures, including subsidy, technical, extension and marketing support (Viswanathan and Shah 2009).
- 2.
PLA is implemented by an Act of the Parliament and it provides for the welfare of plantation labour and regulates the condition of work in plantations. The term ‘Plantation’ itself has been defined under the PLA as ‘any land used or intended to be used for growing tea, coffee, rubber, cinchona and cardamom which admeasures 5 ha or more and in which 15 or more persons are employed or were employed on any day of the preceding twelve months’.
- 3.
It has been found that during the late 1990s and after the cost of tea production has been higher than the domestic tea prices by 20–25 % as compared to significant levels of profit as reported from Indonesia (64–67 %), Sri Lanka (25–31 %) and Bangladesh (7–19 %).
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Vishwanathan, P., Shah, A. (2014). Has Indian Tea Plantation Sector Weathered the Crisis? An Assessment in the Post-reforms Context. In: Das, K. (eds) Globalization and Standards. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1994-1_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1994-1_15
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