Now Tea Becomes Costlier

After milk,tea becomes costlier Hinting a market no longer holier. More entry and regular hearing Could end the price engineering.

In a surprise move, tea distributing companies have raised the price of tea by Tk 60 per kilo.It came in the wake of government’s decision to raise the daily wage of tea workers from TK 120 to TK 170,the lowest daily wage of a tea-worker in the world.Before that tea-workers across Moulavibazar and Sylhet went into strikes demanding a wage hike. But the tea-garden owners were adamant that they would not give in to workers' demands. Intervention of the govt resolved the standoff.

The condition of tea-workers is really horrific. They could vie for a true case of bonded-labor. Colonial garden owners lured them from various parts of India to work in tea plantations in the Bengal. They were given a contract with a meagre salary and deceived to continue the work generation after generation. Their children do not get proper education. So they cannot scale up from poverty. Neither they can get easy credit /opportunity to start their own businesses. TK 120 /day as salary was not only inadequate to feed couple of mouths in the family,it was unjust. So their protest was just and garnered lots of attention.

The little increase TK 170 is still unjust. In addition, it can hardly meet daily expenses in this high inflation era.However, the fuel price hike coupled with wage increase used as pretext to raise the tea price. As I was watching a news clip,one garden-owner shrugged off the responsibility laying the blame squarely on the distributors who invented lots of reasons to justify the price hike.

Rise in prices of milk,meat and rice still rankled with ordinary citizens. Tk 60 increase in one kilo rubs salt to inflation-injury.

However, govt's announcement to reduce diesel price by TK 5 is viewed as gentle breeze to this never-ending price heatwave. But the decision is yet to be translated into prices of essential items.

Big distributors engaged in marketing tea have other ventures too,as we see in the case of other consumer goods. Some even own their own gardens. The price increase came as a shock.If gardens were allowed to market tea at consumers’ doorstep,we would see much lower prices of tea than what we are seeing now. A complete revamp in marketing and distribution of tea is what we want to see now.

For far too long,we have tolerated anarchy in consumer goods and agro-processed goods market by allowing few operators who managed their capital from tobacco,distillery,lending,pharmaceuticals and real-estate businesses.Yet consumers have not seen any drop in prices. An active role of consumer rights body and entry of new comers into the market could put an end to this bad practice.