Indians are known for their appetite for a good cup of chai — or tea — and the country is one of the world's leading producers. India's historic tea industry is going through a technological revolution that is paying benefits to landowners and distributors, and workers are starting to push for a share of the wealth.

India's tea industry

According to the Indian Tea Board, there were 159,190 tea plantations in India, comprised of small and large growers, when it did its last industry report in 2007.

At that time, India's tea industry employed 1.26 million workers, about 635,000 of them women.

One area where the pickers are making progress is in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, in the famed Darjeeling district in the Indian state of West Bengal. CBC's Priya Sankaran and photographer Pawel Dwulit visited the tea growing region near the city of Siliguri to speak to workers and managers in the groves.

India's tea industry is modernizing its distribution systems, adopting things like e-commerce auction systems to better market what it produces. India now exports nearly half a billion dollars worth of tea worldwide, and its sales to Canada alone equal almost $5 million a year.

Workers sing as they pluck tea leaves in a field at the Bagdogra Tea Estate near the city of Siliguri in West Bengal, India. Workers sing as they pluck tea leaves in a field at the Bagdogra Tea Estate near the city of Siliguri in West Bengal, India. ((Pawel Dwulit))

But relatively little of this money goes to the people in the tea fields. The workers spend eight hours a day in the hot sun and must pick at least 20 kilograms of tea leaves to earn a daily wage of a little less than $2 — a low income even in a country where an estimated 300 million live in poverty.

"It's not like $2 in Canada, that is true," says Rajnikanta Verma, the former Indian High Commissioner to Ottawa. "But $2 in India, the way prices are, is still really very, very low. You cannot maintain a family, give them nutritious food, give them health and education, and have any standard of living."

Now the pickers are organizing and starting to demand better wages.

The Bagdogra Tea Estate, a family-owned operation that produces about 1 million kilograms of black tea a year, was one grove hit by a strike last year. Its owners quickly offered modest wage increases to get the pickers back to work.

"We strike because we are paid very little and work hard," says picker Marisia Bada through a translator. "We are striking to get our pay increased. We work from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 5 pm. We have to earn to eat."

To hear Priya Sankaran's full report and interviews with the tea pickers of Siliguri, tune in to The World This Weekend on CBC Radio 1 this Saturday, Feb. 11. The report airs at 7 p.m. Atlantic and 7:30 in Newfoundland, 6 p.m. everywhere else.