What Darjeeling's Tea Garden Workers Expect From Modi — A Ground Report

Darjeeling tea is often called the ‘champagne of teas’ because of the very high price it fetches, especially in the international market. The best crop of the season is often sold for much more than Rs 1 lakh a kilo in Europe, the US and the Middle East.

But the 70,000-odd workers who toil in the 87 tea gardens that produce about 9.6 million kilograms of the GI-tagged ‘Darjeeling Tea’ a year get a pittance: just Rs 250 a day for back-breaking work.

Their living conditions are abysmal and very few employers (managements of the tea estates) extend even the statutory benefits as stipulated under the Plantation Labour Act, 1951 to them. 

The workers, almost all of them fourth and fifth generation labourers in the same tea garden, live in houses they have built in small plots of land allotted to them by the management of their respective tea gardens. 

But they don’t have any rights over the land they have been staying in for generations. In order to stay in the houses they have built, they must send at least one member of the family to work in the garden. Or else, they forfeit the right to live in the houses that have been theirs for generations. 

Apart from this shocking form of indentured servitude, the workers often do not get their statutory benefits — healthcare facilities, sanitation, drinking water, creches, rations, housing, educational facilities, paid leaves etc. 

“It is the duty of the state government to ensure that workers get adequate wages and the tea garden managements fulfil their statutory obligations towards workers. But the Bengal government, in collusion with the exploitative management of most gardens, has kept the workers of Darjeeling tea gardens in a state of deprivation,” Darjeeling Lok Sabha MP Raju Bista told Swarajya. 

Bista, who has been vocal about protecting workers’ rights and welfare and has raised this issue several times in the Lok Sabha, adds that the apathy of the Bengal government towards Darjeeling tea workers is part of the overall disregard and step-motherly attitude towards the Darjeeling Hills and its people by the state government. 

This apathy has also manifested itself in the Bengal government’s opposition to proper implementation of social welfare and other projects funded by the Union government. 

Such projects had, anyway, got mired in corruption all over the state. Trinamool functionaries had pocketed huge amounts of funds provided by the Union government for schemes like the PM Awas Yojana, PM Gram Sadak Yojana, Jal Jeevan Mission, Swachh Bharat Mission and PM-POSHAN scheme, to name just a few. 

Widespread loot of funds and other malpractices, and the Bengal government’s refusal to take remedial measures and punish the guilty, had led to the Union government stopping disbursal of funds for projects under these schemes to Bengal. 

And this has dealt a double whammy to the tea garden labourers. “Darjeeling’s tea garden workers do not get their dues from their employers and from the state government. To add to their acute woes, the state government even blocks implementation of centrally-sponsored schemes for the gardens,” said Manesh Gurung, an activist who has been fighting for the rights of workers. 

Sakal Dewan, a functionary of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) who is also passionate about improving the plight of tea garden workers, tells Swarajya that the workers face another major issue. 

“Children of tea garden workers are educated and their aspirations are, naturally, high. Since wages in the gardens are ridiculously low, migration of the younger generation from tea garden bustees (conglomeration of workers’ houses) to other states is extremely high. This is causing acute problems for the elderly who are left behind,” said Dewan. 

Dewan says that family income in the gardens where, typically, both the spouses work in the garden as pluckers and/or factory workers is barely at subsistence levels.

“Even if both the husband and wife work for the entire month, they will earn only Rs 15,000 a month. That’s barely enough to get three meals a day, leave alone other expenses like clothing, medical care etc,” he said. 

Having heard all these stories of the sorry plight of tea garden workers, Swarajya decided to visit one garden to get a first-hand account of what life is actually like in a garden. 

Nothing ‘Happy’ In Happy Valley Tea Estate

I chose Happy Valley Tea Estate not because of its proximity to Darjeeling town, but because it is a striking example of all that is wrong with the gardens in the hills. 

Happy Valley Tea Estate was established in 1854 by an Englishman, David Wilson, and named the Wilson Tea Estate. That makes it the second oldest tea garden in Darjeeling, the first being Steinthal Tea Estate established in 1852. 

The estate was bought by a wealthy Bengali entrepreneur, Tarapada Banerjee, in 1903. Banerjee also acquired the adjacent Windsor Tea Estate in 1929. He merged the two estates and renamed it Happy Valley Tea Estate.

Tarapada Banerjee’s great grandchildren sold off the estate to a private Marwari-owned company in March 2007. But the company went into the red very soon and in late 2022, after a prolonged closure, the tea estate was acquired by another Marwari-owned company — Lemongrass Organic Tea Estates Pvt Ltd. 

Spread over 177 hectares, the Happy Valley Tea Estate is situated at an average height of 6,900 feet and has over 1,500 workers on its rolls. 

The tea garden is not doing well. The quality of tea it produces has gone down sharply over the past decade, and that’s primarily because most of the tea bushes are well past their prime. The youngest bushes are some 80 years old and in a large section of the garden the bushes are over 150 years old. 

“This is a major problem with most of the tea gardens in Darjeeling. Except for the ones owned by the bigger and professionally-run companies, the managements of the others have never uprooted the old tea bushes and planted new ones. As a result, the quality of leaves has been declining steadily,” said Debjyoti Chakravorty, a doctoral researcher at London’s Bayes Business School, who has been studying Darjeeling’s tea gardens for the past 18 months. 

Most owners of tea gardens, Chakravorty told Swarajya, are only interested in quick profits and are not passionate about the business.

“They want to earn as much profits as they can and once the revenues dry up, they sell the garden and quit. The next owner does the same thing. They never re-invest even a part of the profits in the garden,” he said.

Tea experts say that the maximum productive life of a tea bush is 45 years, and after that the yields start declining in quality as well as quantity.

Thus, all bushes above 45 years should ideally be uprooted and new saplings planted. The gestation period — for a sapling to become a bush that starts yielding leaves on a commercially viable scale — is about four years. 

However, since the whole process of uprooting old bushes and planting saplings is an expensive one, and more so in the tea gardens of Darjeeling with their steep gradients, most owners prefer to carry on with the old tea bushes. 

Having done a background check on the ailing Happy Valley Tea Estate, I wasn’t surprised to discover that it had been closed for the past five days.

Groups of agitated workers huddled outside the gates of the factory told me that they were not paid their wages for the past one month and, hence, they have decided not to work. 

“How can one work without any payment? Our wages are measly and if we don’t get even that, it is impossible to run our families,” said Kalpana Gurung, 55.

She is a plucker in the garden while her husband, Karma, works in the garden’s factory. The two of them earn, between themselves, an average of Rs 10,000 a month. 

Ganga Rai, 50, works in the garden but barely makes enough to make ends meet.

“My son, Adip, works as a daily labourer outside and makes more than I do. I would also have worked outside, too, but I can’t since I will lose the right to stay in my house if I do not work in the garden,” she tells Swarajya. 

In many families of tea garden workers, at least one member works outside the garden.

Munna Gurung, 45, works in the tea garden but her husband works as a labourer outside. “Had he also been working here, we would have had to starve,” said Munna, who has two daughters and a mother-in-law to look after. 

Munna’s daughters study in a college in Darjeeling and have big plans.

“The elder one wants to study business management while the younger one wants to become an architect. No one from my family will work in this garden after me,” says Munna, whose great great grandparents started working in what was then the Wilson Tea Estate in the 1870s. 

Sushma Rai, 50, is worried about the future of her family. “I don’t have any savings and without wages, it is impossible to put food on the table. My husband also works here. We have been skipping one meal a day for the past three weeks and are desperate now,” she tells Swarajya. 

Sushma has two sons — the elder one, Sisir, is an undergrad student at a college in Darjeeling while the younger one, Pranjal, studies in a school.

“They cannot go hungry and we have to give them some pocket money for their daily expenses. We are dipping into our meagre savings, but don’t know how long we can continue like this. My husband and I are having only one meal a day now,” she said. 

Padma Gurung, 50, stays in a small, one-room house made of recycled tin sheets in the middle of the garden.

“I work in the garden and so does my husband Dinesh. Our only son Pratik is a graduate and works in a private firm in Darjeeling. We are the last generation to be working in the garden because it is not possible to stay alive with the wages we get,” Padma tells Swarajya. 

The husband-wife duo make, between themselves, just about Rs 9,000 a month on an average. That’s barely enough to make ends meet. Her house is two decades old, and the roofs leak. A small kitchen garden in front of the house produces a tiny amount of vegetables. Her son constructed a proper toilet from his income last year. 

She doesn’t get piped drinking water in her house, and all other benefits of state as well as centrally-sponsored social welfare projects have eluded her. 

Management Mum

While no one from the management of the Happy Valley Tea Estate was willing to speak on record to Swarajya about the problems facing the garden, an assistant manager agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. 

He acknowledged that the primary reason for the mounting losses of the garden is the poor quality of yield from the old tea bushes. 

“The tea bushes we have here should have been replaced many decades ago. The leaves they produce are of very poor quality and, thus, fetch very low prices. That makes the garden completely unsustainable,” he told Swarajya. 

All the workers here also complained that the garden management does not meet its statutory obligations like providing education and healthcare to workers and their families.

The workers are left to fend for themselves and the management feels its only obligation is to pay the measly daily wage of Rs 250 to the workers. And that, too, has not been paid for more than a month now. 

Bengal Government’s Apathy

The workers’ woes would have been ameliorated if the Bengal government had implemented its welfare measures — doles to women, old age pensions, scholarships for students, free rations etc — honestly. 

Instead of extending all these benefits to workers of Darjeeling’s tea gardens, the state government stands accused of blocking the implementation of centrally-sponsored schemes as well. 

“Had the state implemented even the centrally-sponsored schemes like the PM Awas Yojana, free rations, Jan Dhan Yojana etc honestly, workers would have benefitted immensely. But there was a lot of corruption and the Union government stopped disbursing funds to Bengal for these schemes. The workers are suffering as a result,” said Sakal Dewan.

Darjeeling MP Raju Bista says that the loot of funds is much more acute in the hills than the plains of Bengal. “It is not only Trinamool functionaries, but also their affiliate party in the hills, which has looted central funds meant for the poor here,” said Bista. 

Modi Is Their Only Hope Now

The workers of Darjeeling’s tea gardens are facing a bleak future and with their backs to the wall. Desperately poor and under-privileged, they say their only hope now is Narendra Modi. 

“We need Modi to return to power with a stronger mandate this time. Only then can we expect a better future for ourselves,” said Sushma Rai. 

I ask her to elaborate. Ganga Rai chips in: “Modi will be much stronger and stricter in his third term in power. He will crack down on the corrupt and put them behind bars, and ensure clean governance. We’re sure that Mamata Banerjee will no longer be able to deprive us of benefits due to us. All central schemes will be implemented in the hills and our demands like parja patta (ownership documents) for our homestead lands will be met. Modi alone can end the Bengal government’s step-motherly attitude towards the hills”. 

Others like Puran Tamang, a worker at the Happy Valley Tea Estate factory, said that the people of the hills have high hopes that Prime Minister Modi, in his third term, will facilitate a permanent political solution for the hills. 

“This solution may well be greater autonomy for the hills and direct funding by the Union government. That will benefit all of us immensely,” said Tamang. 

Sakal Dewan, who loves to write poetry, puts it rather imaginatively. “The brew that Darjeeling produces is a bitter one for the much-exploited workers. Modi is the only one who can make it sweet for us,” he said. 

It is with this hope in their hearts that the workers of Happy  Valley Tea Estate, and the 86 other gardens that dot the scenic Himalayan hills and the foothills, will go to the polling stations on 26 April. 

This report is part of Swarajya's 50 Ground Stories Project - an attempt to throw light on themes and topics that are often overlooked or looked down. You can support this initiative by sponsoring as little as ₹2999. Click here for more details.