Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology-Chapter 850: Tea and Coffee Special Economic zones (1/2)

Kodagu, Vijayanagara State, Akhand Bharatiya Empire

The royal carriage passed through the small cement road on the highland tea plantation. Opening the bright purple silk curtains, the fresh aroma of tea leaves gushed into the carriage, making Vijay feel refreshed. The scent of tea was not as strong as it is when it is processed into powder, but the freshness made his whole body relaxed.

Coffee and tea plantations in the empire have become more and more prosperous. Over the span of a decade, the empire has gone from a nation where most of its tea and coffee plants had to be imported from foreign countries to being one of the largest coffee and tea producers and exporters in the world.

In the year 1660, there were only some government-run agricultural plantations that had coffee and tea saplings. But as the specimens continued to multiply, large agricultural giants traditionally focused on plain land agriculture began to branch out and try their hand in highland agriculture.

From there, like a domino, the coffee and tea started to seep into the daily life of each and every Bharatiya, slowly but steadily.

Throughout 1661 to 1665, the scale at which tea and coffee plantations grew was in several thousand percent, where tea reached an annual production of over a thousand tons, and coffee reached several hundred tons. But in the year 1666, a crash occurred where cheap and low-quality coffee and tea saplings that require less time to grow, less maintenance, and produce more leaves were created by a hybrid cultivation method in the Bharatiya Academy of Civilian Sciences Agricultural Department.

All the businessmen who had invested in high-quality coffee and tea plantations across the empire took a massive hit. Thousands of businessmen went bankrupt, dozens of businessmen couldn’t stand the losses and even committed suicide on a large scale. Years ago, it was even the headline of all the major newspapers in the empire and had become the first national issue of the Bharatiya Empire. People began to question the pursuit of better technological progress, and the impact it had on the nation was very worrying. It got so bad that Vijay had to personally act in order to suppress the negative atmosphere creeping into the empire.

However, just like how no one can swim against the current forever, starting from 1667, the tea and coffee plantations began to prosper once again. After the economic collapse of the tea and coffee markets due to the new cheaper tea and coffee saplings brought by the Bharatiya Academy of Civilian Sciences, the whole market size of coffee and tea expanded to include even those in the aspirational class. Lower cost of growing tea and coffee means lower cost in selling it, thereby making it widely available for more people.

As for the owners of the high-quality tea and coffee plantations that took a hit financially because of their major target clientele being swayed by another cheaper alternative, thankfully, by divine intervention, their dilemma did not last long, as the solution to the problem materialized shortly after, it was so simple, yet revolutionary.

The plantation business owners were almost at their wits’ end and a lot of them even considered outright eradicating all the coffee and tea saplings in the plantation to replace them with other alternatives since the middle-income families who used to purchase their products once a month no longer do so, since now they can purchase cheaper alternatives whose taste is only a little lower than the high-end variants. What it lacks in taste makes up for in price. For those who were consuming tea or coffee once in a while when they were in a good mood or when a guest had arrived, now they can consume it daily without putting a huge hole in their pocket.

Although the plantations still retained their high-quality customers since the discovery of cheaper saplings does not affect the decision of high-income individuals, since the difference in price is not to the point of making them change their mind to consider cost effectiveness over their enjoyment of drinking high-quality refined tea or coffee, unfortunately, the high-quality customers only make up over 35% of their buyers. The rest are still middle-class clients.

Then it happened, started by a company called Trupti A One Tea. For the first time in the year 1669, high-quality tea began to be exported to the overseas territories of the Bharatiya Empire. The market in each individual frontier of the empire is very small, even smaller than some big cities in the mainland, but the advantage is that there are a lot of frontiers, and the people who would consume tea and coffee in the frontiers are definitely the rich businessmen and high-ranking officials.

For them, it did not matter if the price of tea and coffee is at a premium of 30% compared to its price in the mainland, as they consumed in bulk, and they ordered several kilograms at a time, eating up all the inventory of Trupti A One Tea company in a month. Following the same principle, other tea and coffee processing companies began to export the product overseas. First, it started with selling it to the overseas territories of the Bharatiya Empire, to different frontiers, but as time went on, the market expanded to other Southeast Asian countries, the Middle East, Africa, and even the Americas.

With the high-quality tea and coffee processing plants finding an outlet, low-quality beverages continued to prosper within the empire. They began to proliferate on a large scale. Tea and coffee stalls could be found in all major carriage stops in the empire. Several products were developed around tea and coffee, like dedicated canteens designed to insulate the heat of the beverage, which became a huge hit in the empire and were later utilised by the military as a standardised item possessed by every soldier to carry sterilised water that would remain warm for a long time.

As the beverage began to ferment, its magical effects of keeping tiredness away were soon discovered. The theorised substance called caffeine became one of the biggest discoveries in the Bharatiya Empire in the field of both biology and chemistry. When the magical effects of tea and coffee were publicised in various newspapers of the empire, the excitement of the people was palpable. Slowly, as the importance of the beverage was raised, changes began to appear in society at a drastic pace. Both tea and coffee are offered to teachers and employees of universities and colleges in the afternoon. Industrial companies became the biggest clients for cheap tea and coffee, where it was provided to the workers once a day to keep them energetic. It became the secret weapon of carriage drivers and rickshaw drivers. It improved their efficiency throughout the day, keeping their mind fresh without any tiredness.

Even several articles were written in the last few months in *Business Weekly* by Abhijit Kumar Sen, the most reputable business newspaper and the most reputable economist of the nation, about how the beverages of tea and coffee were directly linked with the productivity of the empire’s workforce increasing by 10 to 12 percent. As the benefits brought by the tea and coffee were seen by business owners who were unwilling to try this new product without seeing its effects with their own eyes, the consumption became even higher. It was even declared as a golden crop of the empire, its importance put right alongside Finger millet (Ragi), wheat, rice, and corn. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

The sudden explosion of tea and coffee consumption throughout the years 1668, 1669, and 1670 was called the Years of Caffeine Fever. In its span, it created several multi-millionaires and hundreds of millionaires in the tea and coffee plantation industry. However, now that tea and coffee plantations have become so large in scale and have produced so many varieties throughout the year, Vijay felt like it was not good to let this industry grow unregulated. The way the industry has grown is a little crude, where there is no system or framework in place to bring out the best products for each kind of client regularly.

So Vijay decided to set down the framework by forming special economic zones focused on tea and coffee plantations so that the whole industry can be regularized, its quality can be increased, and it will gain standardization, where the quality of the tea or coffee from the same plantation would not widely differ from one harvest to another.

He had been travelling the southern part of the empire throughout the month, inspecting various tea and coffee plantations to see for himself how they are maintained and managed. Like he had expected, there are some plantations that do excellent work and produce the best quality of tea and coffee leaves, while there are also some where the management is nonexistent and the tea and coffee leaves are grown wildly without any fertiliser or neem oil spray to protect against insects.

Going back to the capital, Vijay quickly drafted a bill and passed it over to the Parliament.

A few days later...

News broke out in the media circles that a new bill would be passed in the Parliament, which was rumoured to be revolutionary. Media companies all over the Empire immediately sent their best journalists to the Rajya Sabha to get the exclusive news.

Vinod, the Prime Minister of the Empire, came forward in front of the Parliament with a dignified expression on his face.

He turned back and greeted the Speaker, Guru Ram Shetty, as he put down the document he was carrying on top of the dais, his every move radiating an air of refinement and nobility.

To Be Continued...