Almost 300 industry managers came together to discuss relevant issues concerning land and labour productivity at a one-day workshop held recently in Assam. Organised under the sponsorship of the Tea Board, the one-day workshop deliberated on factors inhibiting productivity in tea gardens in Assam and proposed a framework of innovative, new-look policies for enhancing both land and labour productivity of the tea estates.

The workshop was co-ordinated by Subhas Sarma, director Indian Institute of Plantation Management (IIPM), A Damodaran, professor IIPM, KR Bhagat of Assam Tea Company and Ananda Dasgupta, assistant professor of IIPM, who formed the expert team. They were also joined by AK Kaul, senior vice-president of AssamTea Company and Sanjib Lakha of Hindustan Lever, Doomdooma.

Subhash Sarma took up the aspect of `communications' for productivity improvement and placed the productivity paradigm within the notion of BEST model of IIPM (Behavioural, Economic, Strategic, Technical).

The concept of harmony, co-operation and love was deliberated by the participants who proposed active consideration as a way of addressing the industrial relations problems facing the industry.

According to Sarma, it was time for the Indian tea industry to handle productivity levels on levels of labour productivity (which boiled down to behavioural dimension of productivity improvement), capital production (related to economic production), managerial productivity (related to strategic factors) and technical production (technological factor in BEST). A Damodaran, stressing on managerial productivity highlighted the importance of adopting sound labour deployment strategies as the key element in increasing garden productivity for both pluckingand non-plucking operations.Ananda Dasgupta of IIPM was for ensuring the operation of the HRD concept in total quality management in tea gardens.

KR Bhagat, talked on the need to focus upon the new areas identified by the workshop and outlined the plan to set up an institutional mechanism for `Plantation Management and Productivity Forum' for the tea industry in India soon. An active participation by all tea associations of India could be ideal to enhance productivity norms for the plantation sector.

Industry analysts contended that the area under tea India has grown by just 6.8 per cent over the last ten years, slowing down considerably from the 18 per cent growth in the period 1963 to 1983 (from 3.34 lakh ha to 3.96 lakh ha).

Apparently India has the second largest area under tea cultivation, at 439,000 hectares, after China with around 1,134,600 ha. But this does not provide solace to many who are aware of the fact that India being one of the largest producers registers the slowest growth as far asexpansion of area under tea cultivation is concerned.

The only way out is to go in for more productivity be it through vertical expansion (improvement of output by replanting, expansion and refilling) or human resource development which would increase the yield per hectare, said industry observers.