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Dietician Sheela Seharawat

A Day for Tea Lovers Around the World

How many times have you prepared your cup of tea while thinking of the workers who make it possible for you to have this beverage right now? There are many questions you could ask yourself on any day you prepare and indulge in your tea. Where did that tea come from? Who grew the plant where it is grown? Who picked those tea leaves? How much do they get paid? What are their lives like? Celebrated annually on December the 15th, starting in 2005, it is primarily celebrated in the world’s tea growing nations like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kenya and a host of other countries which count themselves as the tea growing nations.

The first International Tea Day was celebrated on the 15th of December 2005 here in New Delhi and afterwards in Sri Lanka. Organized primarily by the trade unions governing the production and spread of the tea crops from these countries to the rest of the world, this festival has spread to all corners of the world. Tea as a drink has become ubiquitous throughout the known world especially so in the East and South Asian countries of India, China and Japan where drinking tea is a ritualistic part of everyday life. This festival also has a social purpose which is to bring about a lot of awareness on the issues concerning the workers in tea-gardens or tea-estates across those nations that are the major tea-growers across the world. Observing the first ever International Tea Day, the participating nations called for the creation of an International Tea Commission which would serve to promote and strengthen the tea industry and also have specific provisions to protect the interests of tea workers and small growers.

This day aims at confirming the rights of plantation workers and to build the proper awareness and responsiveness among all the concerned parties to identify responsible policy decisions, strengthen advocacy campaigns, facilitating the consumption of tea, and a trade policy that was just in nature. People among this industry regularly come together during this festival and organize dialogues, seminars, public events and submit the relevant demands to their respective governments. Their primary aims are to get better conditions and wages to the workers in the plantations, provide adequate housing to them, and to have the basic government schemes and benefits to reach these workers.