The final word in an October 2019 headline in the Sentinel Assam newspaper captures the turbulent history of one of the world’s most highly reputed centers of tea science and development: “Tocklai Tea Research Institute in Severe Crisis Again.” [emphasis added here] Its staff are on strike, again. It faces a funding emergency, again.
Founded in 1911, Tocklai is the oldest tea research organization in the world. Focused on meeting the needs of Indian growers, it has a long list of contributions to quality and productivity improvements, including clonal tea developments, climatic studies, biotech, and farming services and education. It even created a tea wine in the hopes of stimulating a new market.
The problems that threaten the survival of Tocklai, center on financing. Since 1964, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry provided a grant in aid to Tocklai. This was not a binding agreement or formal budget but a memo of understanding.
The accumulated shortfall in payments reached $5 million by 2017. This has meant that insurance, pension, and severance pay obligations have not been met. The same financial breakdowns have affected staffing, greatly reduced scientific programs and created internal political strains between the Assam field research stations and Tocklai’s Kolkata office in the contest for increasingly scarce resources.
Industry and public sector groups have formed to investigated how to preserve Tocklai. Meanwhile, labor strikes escalate. They began in 2012 with a stoppage by research associates. In 2017, 230 employees struck over delays in implementing a pay agreement. Most recently, industrial action has extended to a series of work stoppages by scientists, workers, and scholars joined by retirees and former officials. While all research, development, and services are carried out at Tocklai, resources are largely controlled and preserved by the Kolkata headquarters.
The future of Tocklai is uncertain and its role as one of the pioneers of tea research is probably over. One major direction sponsored by the Assam government is for it to become a hotel complex. It has a very large 40-acre campus, with heritage buildings, laboratories, workshop, tea factory, and bungalows. The heritage buildings on the campus are now used as tea research laboratories. There is an 88-year-old Tocklai Guest House which was once used to accommodate British tea planters.
Meanwhile, the need for first-rate sustained research increases as India’s farmers face so many challenges: climate change, export competition, yields, labor shortages, and strife, and bio-management.