Reinterpreting Tea Leaves

Fifty Indian rupees. That’s about a dollar and 28 cents at current exchange rates — not enough to buy a cup of coffee most places.

But in northeast India’s Darjeeling District, 50 rupees is a day’s pay for hard-working tea pickers. Four hundred miles away, another half-million earn a similar wage plucking tea leaves in Assam’s humid lowlands.

Tea dominates the economy of both Darjeeling and Assam, names synonymous with some of the world’s best teas. Strong, malty Assam and golden-hued, fragrant Darjeeling teas have been prized above others for more than 150 years.

And during that century and a half, living conditions for tea workers have changed very little.

Pluckers and other tea-industry workers live in small, densely populated villages hemmed in by tea fields. A tea estate is essentially a community unto itself, a company town where the land, the houses — everything — belong to the tea company. Nothing can be changed without the consent of management; in most cases, not even a family garden can be planted without consultation.

In these present-day peasant communities, deteriorating houses typically shelter multiple families. Neither electricity nor running water is commonplace. Hygiene is poor: hundreds of people use a few nearly overflowing latrines. And, when schools exist at all, classes are often conducted under makeshift shelters or trees with few classroom materials.

Across northeastern India’s fabled and troubled tea lands, Mercy Corps is partnering with socially conscious tea estate owners and managers to right several generations of wrongs — and to give a louder voice and greater opportunities to the region’s families.

So far, we’ve financed a handmade-papermaking factory that is giving previously unemployed women a gainful trade; trained another group of women to make a rich compost for which tea companies are willing to pay top-dollar; and begun helping more than 200 farmers grow certified organic tea and sell directly to estates.

More India stories in the Archives

 Mercy  Corps  presents

INDIA OVERVIEW, PROGRAMS DETAILS