Tea Board partners with IIT on technology

The Tea Board of India has collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur to develop technology that will help the industry cut energy costs and produce better teas.

The prototype of the machines incorporating the new technology is currently under field-trials at one tea estate each in the North and the South. Patents have also been applied for the new technology.

The tie-up comes at a time when the tea industry’s margins are getting squeezed due to high costs and reduced earnings and should aid in fetching better prices for the brew.

This marks the completion of a 11 plan project awarded by the Tea Board to the IIT Kharagpur,” an official connected with the developments, who did not wish to be named, told The Hindu.

The machinery, called ‘circular withering trough’ “has already completed field trials at the Tea Research Centre at Nagrakatta, West Bengal and is now undergoing commercial trials at a tea estate in the Darjeeling foothills of a reputed tea company.”

Tea prices have remained depressed for most of 2015 even as cost of production has increased , creating a distress situation for workers in many tea gardens in West Bengal. The gardens in Assam have seen crop loss but prices rule higher as the teas are better quality than that of West Bengal.

The Indian Tea Association, the apex industry body for North Indian producers, admitted that many gardens were paying daily cash wages which were lower than the Rs.122.5 agreed upon at the last Tripartite Agreement in West Bengal.

About 80 per cent of the costs are fixed, with labour constituting 50 per cent of total production cost, making the industry clamour for means of mechanisation.

An official at the Tea Research Association, an industry funded research body admitted that the existing tea-processing technology was about 60 years old and there was scope for improving it to enhance efficiencies.

Goverment's flip-flop on Digital India mascot

It was a day of flip-flops for the Digital India programme. Following an online uproar over a Facebook post by Ankit Fadia, author and self-proclaimed ethical hacker, that he had been appointed brand ambassador of Digital India, the government denied any such move on Tuesday morning only to change its mind and confirm the appointment by evening.

Fadia's appointment had become a subject of discussion after he posted pictures of a July event on Digital India on social media on Monday, announcing that he had been picked as one of the brand ambassadors. Many from the tech community on Twitter reacted with surprise. Some rubbished his claims of being an "ethical hacker." Others said his books were plagiarized; he has written 16 of them. In 2012, an annual security convention held in the US, DEF CON had termed him "Security Charlatan of the Year".


At 9am on Tuesday , the Centre denied any report of such appointment with a release. But soon after, that release could not be accessed on the PIB website. The release said: "There were certain news reports that there is a move to appoint a brand ambassador for Digital India programme. This is to clarify there has been no such move to appoint a brand ambassador as reported." TOI has a screenshot of the now unavailable announcement.

Finally, around 6pm, the Union ministry of communications and IT acknowledged the appointment of Fadia along with three others. "As part of the Digital India week (July 1-7, 2015), the following four brand ambassadors were nominated for a period of one year to propagate the product and applications being launched by the department under Digital India," the release read, naming IIT-JEE toppers Krati Tiwari and Satwat Jagwani, US-based computer scientist and researcher Pranav Mistry and Fadia.