Observed every year on May 21, International Tea Day was officially designated by the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) serving as its coordinating body. The date was chosen to align with an existing observance already marked by tea-producing nations, including India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Malawi, Malaysia and Uganda.
Origins: Where tea began
The story of tea begins in Yunnan province of southwestern China, where the plant Camellia sinensis is believed to have grown wild for millennia. Chinese legend attributes its discovery to Emperor Shen Nong around 2737 BCE, when dried leaves supposedly fell into his boiling water. While mythological, this account places tea’s cultural roots firmly in ancient China.
By the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), tea had become a formalised part of Chinese civilisation, with Lu Yu’s Cha Jing (The Classic of Tea) codifying its cultivation, preparation and philosophy. During the Song Dynasty, powdered tea ceremonies gained prominence, later influencing Japan’s celebrated chado (the way of tea).
Tea reached the Islamic world via the Silk Route and arrived in Europe through Portuguese and Dutch traders in the early 17th century. Britain’s East India Company commercialised the tea trade, transforming a luxury commodity into a mass-consumption product with profound geopolitical consequences.
Colonial economics & the India connection
Britain’s dependence on Chinese tea created a chronic trade deficit. The East India Company’s decision to pay for Chinese tea with opium cultivated in Bengal directly triggered the Opium Wars (1839-42 and 1856-60) — a turning point in modern world history examined closely in UPSC syllabi.
To break China’s monopoly, the British began cultivating tea commercially in India. The Assam variety (Camellia sinensis var. assamica), discovered growing wild in Upper Assam in the 1820s by Robert Bruce and formally identified by his brother Charles Alexander Bruce, became the foundation of India’s plantation economy. The first commercial consignment of Assam tea was auctioned in London in 1839.
Darjeeling tea cultivation began in the 1850s in the foothills of the Himalayas, producing a variety so distinct in character that it carries a Geographical Indication (GI) tag — one of India’s most recognised GI products internationally.
Tea & India’s economy
India is today the world’s second largest tea producer after China and the largest consumer of tea globally. Assam and West Bengal together account for the majority of India’s output, with significant production also from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh.
The plantation sector remains economically and socially significant: it employs over a million workers, a substantial proportion of them women and entire communities are built around tea estates — raising questions of labour rights, housing and welfare that have featured in policy debates and judicial interventions.
India’s Darjeeling, Assam and Nilgiri teas hold GI status, giving them legal protection under the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement — a relevant intersection of trade law and agricultural policy for GS Paper II and III.
Why it matters for UPSC
International Tea Day draws attention to the need for sustainable tea production, fair trade practices and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. FAO uses the occasion to advocate for policy support for tea-dependent economies.
For aspirants, tea connects multiple threads: colonial economic exploitation, the Opium Wars, India’s plantation history, GI tags under TRIPS, agricultural export policy, labour welfare in the organised sector and India’s soft power through its tea diplomacy with nations such as Sri Lanka and Kenya.
GS paper relevance: GS Paper I (World History, Colonial Economy, Indian Culture); GS Paper II (International Organisations, India’s soft power); GS Paper III (Agriculture: plantation crops, export economy); GS Mains (India’s tea industry, trade policy)
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