On 15 December 2006, India along with other tea-producing countries across the world will observe International Tea Day to draw the attention of governments and citizens to the impact of the tea trade on workers, small growers and consumers. The call for observing the day was given by a collective of central trade unions, plantation workers’ federations, small tea grower organisations and civil society organisations.

The International Tea Day was conceived as a collective platform to voice the rights and concerns of the stakeholders in the tea industry, in particular, workers and small growers, across eleven tea-producing countries in the world. The International Tea Day has wide acceptance among the tea-related trade unions and tea producers in the participating tea-producing countries, including, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Malawi, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam.

The tea sector is one of the highest employment providers, employing more than one million people as workers (a majority of them women) and small growers in the country. The majority of the tea workers are migrant population of different ethnicities and religious minorities from the most vulnerable sections of society; the small growers are subsistence farmers. This is a sector in which there is disproportionate value accrual at the higher end of the value chain. This is never passed on to the consumers, producers or workers. Meanwhile, the concentration of power by brands and retailers is increasing the deprivation and vulnerability of the primary producers and workers. The burden of ‘crisis’ in the tea industry is unjustifiably passed on to workers and small growers, and is not reflected in the profitability of the industry. At the same time, governments are abdicating their responsibility in the regulation of the production and pricing of tea and the welfare of workers and small growers. It is in this context, that the trade unions and civil society organisations have come together to organise the International Tea Day.

The observation of Tea Day in India will be organised at local, regional and national levels in the major tea producing states by tea-related trade unions and small tea growers. The local- and regional-level activities around Tea Day include meetings, rallies, dharnas and seminars by trade unions and small growers at zonal and district levels, taking up the issues of living wages and fair prices in the states of Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. At the national level, a public meeting will be held in Gudalur, Tamil Nadu, on 17 December with the mobilisation of around 10,000 people, including workers and small growers from these four states.