Did Your Factory Pay the Tea Board Price?

Paragraph 30 of the Tea Marketing Control Order, 2003 requires every factory that buys green leaf to pay the grower "a reasonable price according to the price sharing formula", worked out from what the factory's made tea sold for and how much made tea a kilo of leaf turns into. Paragraph 30A sets up a district committee — the Collector in the chair, a Tea Board officer as secretary, with growers' and factories' representatives — to fix "the average green leaf price payable to the small tea growers for each month based on the average auction price of tea manufactured by the Bought leaf factories of such district for the same month", and to report factories that do not pay it.

So the price for a month comes from that same month's auctions at Coonoor and is announced early in the next month — September's ₹19.91 was announced on 11 October. It is one figure for the whole district. The share of the sale price it represents is not written into the Order, and we could not find it in any official document, so this page shows only prices that were announced, never one we worked out.

Paying the announced price is an obligation on the factory, not a guideline. Under paragraph 30(2) of the Order the Tea Board can direct the broker who sold a factory's tea to deduct the difference between the announced price and what the factory actually paid, out of the factory's own sale proceeds, so that it reaches the growers.

What makes that possible is a record. Keep every slip or passbook entry showing the date, the weight and the rate. Write down the factory's name, and if neighbours supplied the same factory in the same month, the same gap on several slips is far harder to dismiss than one. Then take it to the Tea Board's office in Coonoor, which is the secretary of the district committee, or raise it at the committee through a growers' association.