50 ^ SOCIAL SCIENTIST
The recent meetings of the tea producing countries under the auspices of UNCTAD and FAO failed to reach an agreement on stabilising tea prices and fixing an export quota. It appears that the East African countries where British tea multinationals have strong producing interests are claiming higher export .quotas.
Th,e private corporate sector in India is in the habit of putting the blame on labour and on government policies for the economic predicament of ailing industries. It is in the, habit of claiming that the main factors retarding development programmes are the declining profits and heavy burdens of taxation. Consequently, it wants to wrest more and more concessions and aid from the government. The tea industry however provides a classic refutation of such claims. The companies are, on occasions, distributing profits higher even than their net profits, by drawing from their reserves.
To sum up, the present policies followed by the tea companies are not in tune with the development needs of the industry as a whole, but rather serve the interests of the managements which seem to believe in grabbing as much from the industry as possible before getting out of it, i e, in the diversification of funds at the expense of a declining industry.
(This paper is a slightly revised version of a chapter of the author^ Ph D thesis titled "The Economics of Tea Plantations in South India". The author is grateful to Jose T Payyappally of Cochin University and Chiranjib Sen, Thomas Isaac, P Mohanan Pillai, Narayanan Nair and D Narayana of Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, for their comments on the first draft of the paper. However, the erws that remain are the responsibility of the author)