News

After many months of work, we have finally secured an ATM for our workers at Chota Tingrai Tea Estate. This ATM will allow digital salary payments for workers and 24/7 access to cash for the community. We hope that this increased access to their accounts will help our workers grow their savings accounts, and save them long, and currently thanks to COVID-19, hazardous trips to town for banking. However, we must provide a lot of education to our workers in order to ensure that inclusion in the formal financial sector benefits them. For example, many of our workers do not know how...

Editorial Opinion by Georgie Rhein From the time I was a child, and my granny served me sassafras tea for a tummy ache and fresh aloe for a skin rash, I have been reminded how natural medicine can be an adjunct to allopathic medicine. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has relied on roots, leaves, flowers, and seeds for over 2500 years to provide relief and cures for a number of ailments. With the Covid-19 virus outbreak in China, TCM was used along with allopathic medicine to treat patients. Three traditional Chinese herb combinations were created, and the efficacy tested on patient...

On the road to Chota Tingrai Tea Estate, Avantika and I cross a dump. It’s a rather disgusting place – full of plastic bags splattered with curry and achar, old newspapers, and rotting pp bags. There is always smoke rising from the immortal plastic fire that smolders within the ever-growing heap’s bowels. It’s also a haunt for local cows. Before visiting India, I didn’t realize how much cows like to eat garbage. But they do. Avantika and I detest this dump with its piled dried slurry and occasional hog. Avantika has tried for the last five years to figure out...

Early this month, Mana Organics visited Japan to explore new opportunities for our tea and catch up with old friends. Here’s what happened: Mana’s mission in Japan was to attend Foodex, the grocery exhibition in Japan. Exhibitors from several countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia covered 775,000 square feet of convention space to hawk their products to over 85000 attendees. We met fantastic folks from all over the world. Many interested in our tea and social mission. We met several Japanese tea producers and had a chance to taste the various types of sencha green tea, hojicha,...

Happy Diwali from everyone at Mana Organics and Chota Tingrai Tea Estate!