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COVER STORY: AGRICULTURE
..While Plantations Perish
In Kerala rubber
and coconut cultivation were profitable businesses. That, of course, was
when processed rubber commanded a price of Rs 60 per quintal and a coconut
sold for about Rs 10. Falling prices, increased import of rubber and palmolein
oil from Malaysia and rising labour costs have upset the bottom lines.
In Cheruvarakkonam village in north Kerala,
Jacob Rasalom, 73, is finding it difficult to get remunerative prices
for his coconuts. "Last year the price was Rs 5 per coconut. Today,
it is
Rs 2.50 which does not even meet the plucking charges," says he.
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Worse Off: Costs, imports rise as incomes
dip.
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"I
don't know how to run my family with a three-digit income."
H. Devraj, Ooty,
Tamil Nadu |
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Ten years ago,
H. Devraj, 38, earned enough from his six-acre tea plantation to
own a house, a car, go on holidays and wear expensive clothes. But
in 1998, prices of tea leaves came down from Rs 18 a kg to Rs 5.
And turned Devraj into a pauper.
Today, he walks long distances for he can't afford a bus ticket.
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Falling tea prices are creating more havoc in
neighbouring Tamil Nadu. On a single day in August 1998, the price of
green tea leaves collapsed-from Rs 18 a kg to Rs 5 a kg. More than two
years later, the 60,000-odd small tea growers still struggle to come to
terms with it. The perennial crop, which made "Nilgiris" a household
name in many countries, has been dubbed the culprit for turning the Blue
Mountains into a green desert. Small farmers now live in abject poverty,
managing to earn only about Rs 1,000 a month. Some can't even employ labourers
and the family does the picking. Others let the leaves wither unplucked
as it's not worth the meagre returns.
The least visible of all, the crisis in plantations
is probably the most severe and has been building up for a longest time.
Almost all plantation crops are facing a steep fall in prices, galloping
costs, loss of export markets and influx of imports. To top it all, plantation
income in most states is taxed-in some cases at a rate as high as 65 per
cent. At stake is the future of growers, wage earners and some industries.
There are 50,000 small tea growers in the country and the industry supports
2.5 lakh workers. Coffee is grown by over 1.4 lakh farmers most of whom
have holdings less than 10 hectares, while there are over nine lakh rubber
growers in India.
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Coconut prices in
Rs per 100 units; rest Rs per kg |
While the politicians run a sustained campaign
against tea imports from Sri Lanka, a closer look reveals that the problem
lies elsewhere-in the export market. The erstwhile USSR had been the biggest
market for Indian tea. But with its disintegration and the rouble devaluation,
the value of the exports slid from Rs 501.87 crore to Rs 316.96 crore
in the past two years.
Obviously, the Tea Board took Russia and the
CIS countries-which paid good prices even for substandard Indian tea-for
granted. When Russia realised that Kenya, Sri Lanka and Indonesia could
supply tea of a much better quality at lesser prices, trouble began to
brew for India.
The Tea Board launched a quality upgradation
programme in July 2000. But like most government programmes, its results
are still on paper.
-Arun Ram in Chennai and Jacob George in Thiruvananthapuram
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