Rajah Banerjee soon realised that creating grass banks and leaving large areas of the estate to flora and fauna is not enough. He scoured libraries and studied sustainable methods of farming in the ancient times and realised the answer lies in mulching as well as going organic. “I tried convincing my father, but in vain. So I, along with a couple of workers, chose a segregated five acre plot of estate where we started this practice of mulching. We stopped using fertilisers and pesticides and started using cow dung, compost and neem leaves extracts for pest-control. We processed the tea plucked from this section separately in the factory. And during the morning tea tasting sessions, my dad would taste tea from this section and declare it to be fantastic. He would ask me to find out which part of the garden the leaves came from, and I would feign ignorance and tell him I will find out. This little game went on for about six months and ultimately, I took my dad to that patch of the estate and told him all about my little experiment. It was only then that he was convinced and gave the go-ahead to make Makaibari a truly organic estate, the first one in the country,” says Rajah with a broad smile.

The Makaibari Community

After he took over the operations at Makaibari, Rajah Banerjee turned his attention towards turning the workers of the estate into stakeholders. “I realised the women folk of Makaibari, like their counterparts elsewhere, were a marginalised and suffering lot. But in ancient India, women were an empowered lot and we had the concept of stree or nari shakti. But we lost it somewhere along the way. The challenge was to get women to assume their rightful place,” said Rajah.

The way to empowerment of women was quite simple and, again, Banerjee found it in Hindu philosophy. The cow, he realised, could empower women and create a sustainable and holistic environment for Makaibari. He created a joint body of all the stakeholders of Makaibari with a corpus of funds, from which loans were given out to women for rearing cows. The cows give milk, the dung was used to make compost which generated biogas for cooking and fertilisers for the tea bushes. So the women no longer had to go to the forests in search of firewood, their children became healthier with the consumption of milk and the women made money not only by selling the excess milk, but also the compost to the garden. The money they made went for better education for their children.

A revolution of sorts happened in Makaibari, which now has 1,500-odd community members staying in seven villages that dot the large estate. “Once women had money in their hands and started contributing to the family income, they got a greater say in family matters and started making wise choices for their families,” said Banerjee, who also followed it up with other welfare measures like setting up a state-of-art computer training center for the children of the Makaibari community, a well-stocked library and scholarships for meritorious students.

Another game-changer was the introduction of homestays. Rajah Banerjee explained the concept to a few enterprising youngsters of the Makaibari community, got them to undergo professional training in housekeeping and hotel management and then facilitated sanction of small loans to interested families to build an extra room and washroom in their houses for guests. This became a money spinner and today, there are 33 homestays in Makaibari that guests from around the world flock to all year round. Banerjee also incubated and mentored youngsters from the Makaibari community to become small entrepreneurs. Many are doing very well in their businesses today.

The Makaibari community - the 670 households of stakeholders -thus prospered. It was then that Rajah Banerjee thought of taking a giant leap forward. “Four generations and more of the Makaibari families have been associated with the garden and so they are the real owners. More than a decade ago, I laid out a plan to make the whole community the legal owners of the garden while I would only look after the factory, the production part,” said Banerjee. He wanted the womenfolk to come forward and take ownership of the garden. “When women are owners, they run a place much better with total dedication and honesty,” explained Banerjee.

Countdown To Departure

Unfortunately, the womenfolk were not ready to take the plunge. Banerjee’s two sons were also not interested in running the garden and he himself was not getting any younger. This realisation about his mortality struck him hard when he suffered a severe health setback in 2014. It was, thus, with a heavy heart that the same year, he sold a majority stake in Makaibari to a larger group. But Banerjee soon discovered that his management principles differed fundamentally from that of the new owners. And he started thinking of selling his remaining stake and moving on.

The 104-day shutdown of the Darjeeling Hills from mid-June to end-September last year in support of the demand for Gorkhaland crippled Makaibari, like all other gardens in the hills. The last straw that broke Banerjee’s back, proverbially speaking, came in the form of a devastating fire that reduced his 160-year-old heritage bungalow, with priceless artefacts and memories, to ashes. That was on 16 March 2017. “That was a signal for me to move on, to give up Makaibari and spread the learning from Makaibari elsewhere,” said Banerjee. Exactly a year later, on 17 March 2018, he announced his departure for ever from Makaibari.

But the last, of course, has not been heard of Rajah Banerjee. In fact, the world will get to know and hear more of him as he replicates his unique Makaibari experience on a much larger canvas. Banerjee’s new avatar is ‘Rimpocha’, meaning the re-incarnation.

Sultan of Brunei

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