'Tea Lady' inspires drug addicts to shun habit

Itanagar (PTI): Wakro, a tiny laidback town en route to Hindu pilgrimage site Parashuram Kund in Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh, has made an impact on the tea growers of the country for its organic variety popularized by Basamlu Krisikro. Known as the "Tea Lady" among her peers, Basamlu is on Friday not only cultivating organic tea in her five-hectare land, but has motivated many local people of the area, including a few drug addicts, to go in for the chemical-free beverage farming. During 2009, when her mother Gutitun was diagnosed with cancer, she began giving her a daily cup of organic green tea sourced from a niche estate near Roing town in Lower Dibang Valley district. But it wasn't always possible for her to travel miles to get the beverage. So Basamlu, 39, decided to grow tea in the backyard of her house at Wakro. "Many people in my area thought I committed a mistake when I planted tea. They felt I could have planted oranges instead, or better still opium," she said. Last year, she proved the cynics wrong. She sold 8,500 kg of green tea made in a small mechanical factory she had set up. She found buyers from Canada, Australia, USA, Japan and Germany for her Wakro Organic Tea brand. More importantly, local people bought a substantial quantity of her produce. Lohit and its adjoining districts of Anjaw, Tirap, Changlang and Longding are known for opium cultivation. It was the outcome of an opium war the British had unleashed in the 1800s � much like the one against China's Qing Dynasty � to make the tribal people too intoxicated to resist colonisation. "Our people are being threatened by opium farming that fetches them money, but turning them into addicts. Anti-drug agencies don't come here because this place is far off," Basamlu, a Delhi University alumni, said. She motivated the youths of her locality as well as adjacent areas to go in for tea cultivation.