Tea Board issues ID card to Assam’s small tea growers

The Tea Board of India has started issuing identity card with QR code to small tea growers in the Northeastern state of Assam. The Government-run agency, established to promote the cultivation, processing, and domestic trade as well as export of tea from India, distributed the first batch of cards on January 20th in the Bongaigaon District. The ID card shall be used for buying and selling of green leaf from small tea growers through a mobile app. This identification process has been a long standing demand of small tea growers who wish it to help better regulate the industry.

The process of reaching out to the small tea growers and providing them with an Identity card with photograph and biometric features stored in a memory chip was started in 2013 by the Tea Board. The agency has so far collected records of around 88,000 small tea growers from Assam alone and over 100,000 for the entire North East region. Tea Board has provided nearly 75,000 ID cards to the small tea growers so far. The initiative was undertaken to employ the latest in technology in streamlining the process of tea leaf collection, processing and sale – one of India’s top export products.

Through the mobile app, small tea growers can record the quality and quantity of leaf for sale to the factories along with the date and time of sale. The price has been kept optional and the buyer of the green leaf, or bought leaf factories, will be able to buy the leaf from small tea growers’ by use of the same app. In the process, the QR code in the ID card will be used to capture the growers’ details with unique ID number. The data will form valuable resource base to help strengthen India’s tea industry through necessary training, infrastructure, policy and investment requirements.