COONOOR, India (Reuters) - India's struggling tea sector is seeking changes in the law to allow for diversification into other crops to fight rising production costs and increase returns, officials said on Monday.

At present laws such as the Plantation Labour Act, land reform acts of various states and Minimum Wages Act inhibit diversification and need drastic overhaul, said J.K. Thomas, president of the United Planters' Association of Southern India.

"Even while a plantation commodity is economically unviable, we cannot change over to alternate crop because of the restrictive and archaic laws which have outlived their purpose," he said.

It is high time that necessary legal amendments were brought about for allowing tea estates to diversify into other crops like bamboo, jatropha and palm, Thomas told a planters meet in Coonoor.

You, me and Camellia Sinensis

Boy George was perhaps right when he said if he had to choose between having a good cup of tea and having sex, he would choose the former. Especially if it happens to be tea made in Sri Lanka, for as Dr. Ziyad Mohamed once observed when he was the Director of the Tea Research Institute Thalawakelle, Ceylon Tea is the best tea in the world.