Response of the CTUs to the Tea (Development and Promotion) Bill, 2022

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has announced its intention to repeal the Tea Act, 1953 to enact Tea (Development and Promotion) Bill, 2022 in its place. It published the Bill on its website on 10 January 2022 and sought responses from the public before 21 January 2022.

We have decided to submit before the Government, through the concerned Ministry, following interim observations, after a brief review of the various provisions in the proposed Bill while demanding more time for submitting our detailed objections on various anti-worker and anti-industry provisions of the proposed Bill.

At the outset, it must be stated that neither the Ministry of Commerce and Industry nor the Tea Board of India has given sufficient time to carefully go through the Bill and give our comments. The Tea-plantation industry being a highly labour-intensive industry, the tea plantation workers or their unions are the major stakeholders, and their opinion on the issue can and should no way be ignored; moreover, they  cannot be expected to keep browsing websites of different ministries to be informed of their announcements. Further, the hurried way the comments are sought defeats the very purpose of informed democratic participation in the decision-making processes. Therefore, we urge the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to extend the date for receiving comments from the public and stakeholders and also the trade unions.

The note to the Bill 2022 indicates that it proposes gross changes in objectives, functions, and the powers of the Tea Board. The Bill 2022 proposes that the functions of the Tea Board will be to optimise the production, sale and consumption of tea as well as to promote economic, scientific and technical research. But Tea Bard’s role in workers’ welfare has been omitted. Moreover, while the proposed objectives etc correspond to its existing functions as per the Tea Act, 1953, we understand that, in a major shift, the Bill 2022 does not assign any regulatory powers to the Tea Board, leaving it almost completely unarmed. This has been justified by pointing out that regulating export quota in a competitive open international market is redundant and that growth of small tea growers has effectively made redundant the provisions of regulating land under tea cultivation. This argument is totally unjust and therefore unacceptable; India being a major producer of tea in global market, the Tea Board has got a definite and regulatory role to play in national interests and also in the interests of this highly labour-intensive as well as land-intensive industry, fetching huge foreign exchange earnings for the country.

The exclusion of Chapter 3 (Control over the extension of tea cultivation) and Chapter 4 (Control over the export of tea and tea seed) take away the regulatory powers of the Tea Board. Further, we are dismayed at the complete exclusion of Chapter 3A that deals with "management or control of 'tea undertakings' or 'tea units' by the Central government in certain circumstances". This tantamount to complete abdication of responsibility by the government for protecting the interests of the industry, the huge land-resources deployed in it and its huge workforce, and therefore, much detrimental to the national interests.

According to the information provided by the Tea Board of India, there are 1569 estates cultivating tea on 4,20,670.63 hectares of land in tea growing states of India. More than 1.2 million workers are engaged by these estates. They are descendants of migrant workers who were brought to tea gardens. They live within tea estates but do not possess housing rights or land rights. They are completely dependent on plantations for food, sanitation, health, and education. Workers are not individuals but constitute a worker community.

While the exclusion of Chapter 3A opens, potentially, 4,20,670.63 hectares of land under tea plantation, for competitive commercial avenues of action, the Tea Bill 2022 is completely silent on the rights of workers and worker communities dependent exclusively on these tea plantations. We find this unacceptable and apprehend that it creates a situation for gross labour rights and human rights violations. The increasing instances of closure and abandonment of tea gardens and the miserable plight of the concerned workers in such units makes us to be extremely concerned as well as cautious in this matter.

We note with concern that the Tea Bill 2022 does not consider the impact of the opening of hundreds of thousands of tea land estates for commercial use without regulatory overseeing, which is going to have disastrous consequence on the concerned workers and their families besides having extremely negative impact on the ecological balance. Tea estates have trees, forests, and water bodies.

We are surprised to find that despite the critical alignment of tea workers to the tea industry, the Tea Bill has not included the worker community as a stakeholder. This omission must be corrected, the worker and their trade unions must be included within the definitions of a stakeholder and be made equal partner in all consultations.

We are concerned that neither the Ministry of Commerce and Industry nor the Tea Board of India has so far invited the Trade Unions to hear their views on the Tea Bill 2022.

While we acknowledge the importance of a healthy industry, we are upset about the complete neglect of the interests of rights of tea workers and tea community while drafting Tea Bill 2022.

We strongly demand that the Ministry of Commerce and Industry must not take any unilateral move without appropriately addressing the above-mentioned opinions/ observations/ concerns and should give more time for receiving comments from the public and must organise meetings with sufficient notice to hear the voices of the stakeholders including the trade unions.