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The next time you visit a tea shop, look around you. Look at the tea prices and ask yourself a very simple question: ‘How much of the price I pay goes to the grower?”Why? Because while tea, and especially speciality tea, fetches a high price in the market, the same does not translate into a higher income for those who give their life to growing tea. Given that even today, tea plucking and packaging is mostly a women-run affair, is it not time that the women see the benefits too when their tea fetches a higher price.
This is where the Grassroots Tea Corporation, as part of the Udyamini project, is trying to intervene. Speaking about the project, and how it had helped her, Lalita Rangpipi, a tea grower from Ra Rangpi village under the Karbi Anglong district, said that GTC and its interventions had helped her increase her income up to 300%.
“Earlier, we could get up to Rs 20 per kg for the tea leaves,” she said. “Now, however, after we started making green tea, we can get up to Rs 60 per kg,” she said. Of course, this change did not happen overnight. “Earlier,” said Rangpipi, “we had no idea about green tea. GTC personnel trained us, assisted us, and taught us how to process tea leaves to make Green Tea.”
The training is part of GTC’s efforts to ensure that rural women entrepreneurs receive a holistic education when it comes to tea, helping them not only increase their income but also learn how to better market their products. As alluring as it may sound, growing tea and selling it for a higher price is not the only aim of the GTC. An equal amount of focus is paid to ensuring that the tea is grown without any chemical fertilisers, ensuring that the tea tastes and feels as natural as possible. Grassroots Tea Corporation (GTC), acting as a technical partner in the Udyamini-Rural Women Enterprises Program, provides technical inputs to women in small tea growers’ households to cultivate chemical-free tea, manage operating tea processing units and market ethical, traceable Premium Karbi Handcrafted Tea. This not only supports the women in generating sustainable income but also promotes environmentally friendly and socially responsible practices in the tea industry.
For now, the GTC is planning to sell the tea mostly to other businesses (B2B), but plans to sell the tea in the retail market are also being discussed. The GTC is also working on launching a digital app to ensure that the women can keep track of their work.
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