A woman who wanted to give respite to her ailing mother has led to a tea revolution in remote lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh. Thanks to Basamlu Krisikro, a native of remote Wakro area in lohit district, who had started tea plantation for the treatment of her mother, who was recovering after an operation in Mumbai. The subsequent success of Basamlu is now inspiring several natives in lohit and other neighbouring districts to replace their opium fields with small-scale tea plantations.
“My mother was suffering from lung cancer and we took her to Mumbai for treatment. She had undergone an operation and fortunately started recovering. But the doctors told me to give her a dose of organic green tea. As I had to travel a long distance to Assam to buy organic green tea, I had decided to turn my backyard into a tea plantation to produce organic green tea,” said Basamlu, a post-graduate from the Delhi University. “Mine was just a beginning. later, I motivated many others in the locality to turn their opium cultivation to a small-scale tea plantation. Some of them showed interest and it soon spread in neighbouring areas as an alternative to opium cultivation,” she added.
The lohit, Anjaw, Tirap and Changlang districts bordering China, are notorious for poppy cultivation. Wakro alone has around 12,000 to 13,000 opium cultivators. locals say the buyers are all locals who smuggle the narcotic into the south-east Asian countries. One need to have a cultivation area of one hectare and it gives about six to seven kgs of opium per year. According to the local market, about 12 grams of opium fetches Rs650 .