By Fakir Balaji, IANS,
Coonoor (Tamil Nadu) : The 118th annual conference of the United Planters’ Association of Southern India (Upasi) turned a damp squib as a large number of delegates kept away due to inclement weather and rescheduling of the two-day event that began Saturday on a dull note.
With the onset of the northeast monsoon in the southern peninsula, this scenic hill station nestling atop the Blue Mountains (Nilgiris) has been battered by incessant rains and chilly winds since a fortnight.
Though the major event of the planters growing coffee, tea, rubber and spices (pepper and cardamom) mainly in the three southern states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu is held every year during September second or third week over the century, the busy schedule of union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, who was to inaugurate it, forced the association to postpone it week-after-week for his presence.
Non-availability of Sharma and his deputy (Minister of State for Commerce Jyotiraditya Scindia) even for the re-scheduled day, forced the organisers (Upasi) to invite union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and union Labour and Employment Minister Mallikarjun Kharge to preside over the conference, that too, on a weekend.
For some reason, which the association declined to share with the media, Ramesh did not turn up Sunday, forcing Kharge to do the honours in the presence of Lok Sabha members P. Viswanathan from Kancheepuram constituency in this southern state and P. Jayapradha Nahata from Rampur constituency in Uttar Pradesh and a veteran south Indian actress.
Ramesh and Kharge hail from Karnataka, a leading producer of coffee and spices.
Ironically, former telecom minister A. Raja of the DMK, an ally of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, represents the reserved Nilgiris constituency in the Lok Sabha. As he is jailed and framed in the multi-billion rupee 2G-scam, his absence as the local political leader at the inaugural event was conspicuously felt with relief.
“This is the first time in the history of Upasi that its annual meet had to be put off for want of a VIP (central ministers and law makers) to inaugurate and address the planters. About 60 percent of the planters from the three southern states chose to skip this time due to fickle climate, heavy fog and sudden downpour,” S. Balliappa, a coffee planter from Karnataka, told IANS on the margins of the conference here.
Unlike in the past, holding the two-day event on a weekend and ahead of Diwali also discouraged several planters and other stakeholders in the sector.
“Of the association’s 800 members, only about 300 are able to attend the conference, as the five-week delay and re-scheduling the event to a weekend at a short notice had put off many members, planters and invitees from participating,” one of the organisers admitted but declined to be named as he was not authorised to brief the media.
Even the number of exhibitors from the sector and its associated industry players declined 50 percent, as truant weather thwarted their plans to showcase their equipment and technologies at the wet venue adjacent to the Upasi headquarters on the slopes of the dense wooded hills.
The main conference Sunday was preceded by the commodity outlook session where an overview of coffee, tea, rubber and spices was presented by the respective boards to the delegates. A technical session was held Saturday where experts in the sector presented papers pertaining to the four plantations.
Barring Rubber Board chairperson Sheela Thomas, chairmen of other state-run boards for tea, coffee and spices and their deputies were not present on the occasion, disappointing the planters as well as the beleaguered organisers.
The plantation sector plays an integral role in the economy of the three southern states, which account nearly for the entire production of coffee, natural rubber and spices and 21 percent of the tea produced in the country.
Of the country’s 1.6-million growers and 2.4 million labourers involved in the plantation sector, around 79 percent (1.4 million) of growers, majority of them small and tiny, and 57 percent (1.4 million) of the workforce are engaged in south India.