Plan to brand Assam tea raises quality concerns

Once the envy of tea growers world-wide, the north-eastern Indian state of Assam hopes to reclaim lost pride with special branding for its strong-flavoured tea. But tea growers would do better to focus on quality.
"We want Assam tea to be recognised world-wide as special, so it should have a brand name," Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi told Reuters, adding that branded "Assam Tea" would use only leaves from Assam. Gogoi said the branded tea would be exported soon.
India's tea exports have dipped over the years due to declining quality, as most bushes are more than 50 years old and need to be replanted. Assam accounts for 60 percent of India's tea output.
India's tea exports fell 29 percent in January to 11.17 million kg from a year earlier, but production in the world's largest tea consumer rose 9 percent to nearly 24 million kg.
Once the largest tea exporter, India now ranks behind Kenya, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
"If the raw material is bad, then machines cannot improve the quality," tea grower Chand Kumar Gohain told Reuters in Dibrugarh, a tea growing centre in eastern Assam, 350 km (220 miles) east of Guwahati, the state's main city.
"The first thing that should be improved is quality of the green leaf. Branding can only come later." The British pioneered tea growing in the 1820s in Assam, which became the world's single largest tea-growing region.
A decade ago, the Assam government encouraged villagers to grow tea to generate employment in the state racked by a decades-old separatist insurgency, where officially more than 2.5 million people are jobless in a population of 26 million.
Tea plantation owners say the government should impose quality control on thousands of villagers who have been allowed to grow tea in their backyards to boost employment. There are an estimated 40,000 small tea growers in Assam's villages producing about 100 million kg (220 million lbs) a year. Their tea is sold in the open market to processors who, in turn, sell to exporters.
While the move has boosted employment, there is little check on quality, say plantation officials.
"You can't have quality and quantity at the same time," said Siddhartha Chaliha, whose estate produces 400,000 kg (881,849 lbs) of tea a year. "Without good quality tea, you are sunk."
The garden owners say tea produced by small growers often reaches processors damaged and stale after travelling long distances in a land with poor transport. This can dent the reputation of long-standing plantation owners.
Assam's authorities are yet to respond to the major tea garden owners' demand for quality checks, though some factory owners buying loose tea from small growers say they maintain a tight check on quality.