Dipped in Death
Palash Biswas
(Contact: Palash Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata - 700110, India. Phone: 91-33-25659551)
I was not shocked to read the first page of bangla statesman today as I got the familiar news published as lead, Twenty eight deaths in a Tea garden, Vornabadee in Dooars, West Bengal. Rest of the world is well aware of malnutritiondeaths and suicides in Vidarbha and elsewhere in India. The left parties are most vocal to highlight these items. But, in fact, in the land of land reforms where the left launched an agitation called Food Movement during sixties, peasants die and commit suicide and it is a routine in the Left Rule.
Poor food and water has led to the deaths of over 350 people in four tea estates of Dooars region in six months in the year 2003. Similarly, there are more than 12 cases of starvation deaths and suicides reported from Kerala. Since all the estate hospitals have closed down there is no medical help available to the workers. Most of the male workers are abandoning their families and leaving in search for alternative jobs to far off places, rendering the women with their children helpless in the plantations.
We generally are not concerned with tea gardens. Do we feel anything when we see the brutal footage of statepower in Nandigram, Singur, Barnala, Kalinga Nagar, Ganga Nagar?
No.
Absolutely No.
Otherwise suicidal SEZ and weapon of mass destruction called Globalisation could not continue to play havoc in Rural India.
The closure of tea plantations in West Bengal has led to an unprecedented human tragedy as workers struggle to survive.But West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee denied that there was any starvation death in the ailing tea gardens of north Bengal and said the district administrations had been asked to ensure that none died of starvation. Answering a query at a press conference here in connection with CII-sponsored seminar 'Sikkim-North Bengal Partnership Initiative - Nathula as a Facilitator for Regional Growth', Bhattacharjee said he had talks with tea workers' union leaders earlier in the day and none of them could establish that there had been even a single case of starvation death.
Naxalite leader Kanu Sanyal and others have been alleging that several hundred tea workers had died of starvation in the area.
Bhattacharjee said the administration was asked to ensure that workers of all closed and deserted tea gardens got Rs 500 each as announced by the government, sufficient man days were created for them under the food for work programme and government relief was distributed whenever and wherever necessary to save them and their family members from starvation.
The chief minister said any planter who misappropriated provident fund of tea workers would be brought to book.
The state government, he said, was also taking measures to solve the crisis facing the tea industry. Accordingly, a paper on the crisis was prepared and the government had started discussion based on it.
Today, India is one of the largest producers and consumers of tea in the world. It produces 31% of the total tea in the world. Tea is one of the largest foreign exchange earners and source of government revenue in India.The tea industry is also the second biggest employer in India after Indian Railway. It employs more than 20 million people and half of the workforce is women.
In India, the states of Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh produce tea. The Darjeeling and Assam tea are world famous for their fine quality.
Tea leaves are collected in two processes in India: CTC (Cut, Tear, Curl) and Orthodox method.
Tea in India is sold through six auction centers situated in Calcutta, Guwahati, Siliguri, Cochin, Coonoor, and Coimbatore.
There are 88,115 tea estates in India in total.
India mainly exports tea to Russia and CIS countries, USA, Japan, West Asia, Asia Pacific region, and European countries.
Between April-August of 2006, India produced 587.25 million kg. During the same period in 2005, it produced 571.14 million kg.
Have you ever enjoyed the film by Tapan Sinha, Sagina Mahato based on a story written by no one else but Gaur Kishore ghosh.
For me I have to have the taste of tea dipped in death as I have to remeber that it is because of an agitation led by my late father Pulin Kumar Biswas, the refugee leader from undivided UP, that I was not born in a tea garden.
Back in 1952, the East Bengal dalit refugees of Jassore, Khulna and Barishal were sent to Siliguri to engage them as coolies in Tea Gardens. They resisted as they were traditionally peasants and wanted land. Thus , the move of Bidhan chandra roy government failed. As a punishment my father was sent to Orrissa with all rebellions. In Orrissa he was married to my mother basanti devi. But they could not settle in Orrissa and were sent to Nainital, and thrown into the dense forests of terai. Bengali and Punjabi refugees inhibited there. There , too , he led the dheemri Block peasant`s rising in 1958.
Hence, I have special feelings whenever I read about deaths in Tea gardens.
It could have been destined for us, too.
The tea industry of India is going through a major crisis. Tea gardens in India experienced closures and abandonment especially during the years 2002-2004 in the Dooars region of West Bengal, in Ponmudi, Trivandum District and Peermade, Idukki District of Kerala with a lesser magnitude in Assam and Tamil Nadu. At present, there are reports of continuous closures in some of the tea gardens in West Bengal and Kerala.Tea estate workers, from the very beginning are dependent on the estate management for food, drinking water, housing, health, and other basic facilities. With the closure and abandoning of the tea estates, there is no work, no wages, no electricity and no water available for the workers. Housing, which is already in poor condition, is further deteriorating and sanitation has broken down. These problems have compounded with existing social problems – particularly non-compliance to labour legislation that already characterises the industry.
The impact of loss of work on these already poor workers is so severe that many are facing starvation. For the affected workers there are few alternatives. While the children have stopped going to school, the women are migrating to cities in search of illusive jobs. Some others survive by crushing stones or by collecting wild fruits and vegetables. In some cases, impoverished women are forced to sell their bodies as a means of survival.
The district of Jalpaiguri in West Bengal flanks the foothill of the Himalayas. The area forms a part of what is well known in literature as the ‘Terai’ or ‘Dooars’ and has lately been subjected to large-scale human interference and its consequential hazards, mainly, river shifting, deforestation, water quality and also social problem. Water resources are at the heart of sustainable development in Jalpaiguri district. Water of sufficient quantity and quality is an essential resource for agriculture, industry and tourism, but also for everyday life in cities and villages. But water resources are deplete and degrade due to the use of huge amount chemicals in tea garden belts for better production which contaminates ground water through percolation and rivers and other water bodies through surface run-off. The lost of quality is causing health hazards and death of human which disturbs the whole ecology system of this region. The identification of environmental hazard of tea garden belts is directly or indirectly caused by the water quality, geomorplogy, geological, hydrological condition and other land use and also socio-economic pattern with the help of GIS.
Tapan Sinha's SAGINA MAHATO was a good effort. Sagina was a coolie who couldn't see the oppressed being done injustices, and later rises to be their leader. Some might categorize SAGINA MAHATO as a political film, although human drama and relationship lies at the heart of this magnum opus. Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu played the central characters. Anil Chaterji also acted in a supporting role. The Bengali version of this film starred Uttam Kumar.
With the end of the war in August 1945 trade union activity increased and GHOSH was assigned in early 1946 to organize the Lalmanir Hat branch of the Bengal and Assam Railwaymen's Association. When the police evicted him from Lalmanir Hat, which was under British rule, he crossed the nearby border into Cooch Behar, then one of the princely states ruled by a maharaja. While the Lalmanir Hat police were going through the procedures required to request the maharaja's police to evict him, "I was just going back and forth across the border and doing my job," GHOSH relates. "For five months I played this game."
He was next sent to Darjeeling to bring into the party fold the organizer of the workers on the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway. He later reamed that the union wanted to factionalize the workers and was working with the company to oust the organizer. The union accomplished this by giving him a pompous title in the overall organization, whereby he lost control of his home group. The organizer whom GHOSH was ostensibly sent to help proved to be "a very good, tough man and a born organizer," and became his friend. "The net result of this experience," GHOSH relates, "is a story, named for the organizer Sagina Mahato, which tells how a
The 1981 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts
During his youth, GOUR KISHORE GHOSH remembers, "we were almost like a family of nomads." The eldest and only son of six children of Girija Bhusan Ghosh and Sadhana Mazumder, GHOSH was born on June 20, 1923 in Hat Gopalpur, the home village of his mother in Jhenida subdivision in the Jessore district of what was then East Bengal, India, and is now Bangladesh. His father, who came from a neighboring village, had taken medical training in Calcutta and was practicing as a doctor in the area. The wandering began when GHOSH was five and his father suddenly accepted a job in Sylhet as the doctor on a tea plantation.
GHOSH remembers that party members were torn by a conflict between the Moscow-dictated line the CPI was following during 19391941 (that World War II was an imperialist war and Britain should not be helped) and the deviationist position of Manabendra Nath Roy (that it was an anti-fascist war and India must join with Britain). For taking this stand M. N. Roy was vilified and branded a British agent by the CPI. GHOSH s own rejection of "hollow-thinking communists" occurred after Hitler's forces invaded Poland in August 1939. Shortly thereafter the student group to which he belonged left the CPI and joined Roy's "more rational" League of Radical Congressmen which in 1940 became the Radical Democratic Party. When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941 the CPI reversed itself and called for all-out aid for the Allies, including Britain.
By 1941 the number of destitutes in the small family home in Nabadwip had become unmanageable and GHOSH s father rented another house for them. From this grew his idea of greater service to the community by establishing a permanent home for deserted people. GHOSH was 18 and had just completed high school when his father went his separate way, leaving GHOSH to care for his mother and four younger sisters; his eldest sister had married at 16 and lived elsewhere. GHOSH s father now runs an orphanage and maintains occasional contact with the family with the detachment of a stranger.
GHOSH believes Calcutta's largest Bengali-language daily, Ananda Bazar Patrika, hired him as a junior reporter in 1952 because his friend Amitabha Chowdhury had declined their offer. Chowdhury was a respected reporter on Jugantar, the second largest Bengali newspaper (and in 1961 the Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Joumalism and Literature "for scrupulous and probing investigative reporting in protection of individual rights and community interests"). GHOSH s Ei Kolkatai had attracted the attention of the paper's publisher which made him the second choice although he had had little experience as a reporter. While working for the newspaper GHOSH continued contributing to Desh.
Publication in the latter of six stories he wrote between 1952 and 1954 about Sagina Mahato and five other political personalities he had met added another dimension to his reputation as a penetrating social critic. The series was published in book form in 1956 under the title of the lead story, Sagina Mahato.
Among the boys taking their matriculation examination in 1941, GHOSH was one of the very few to qualify for Division I and he was offered tuition scholarships by two Calcutta colleges. He went to Calcutta intending to study and work part-time, but when neither college could guarantee him a place in their hostels, he had to forego both offers.
Marxist organization destroys a natural labor organizer. No personalities can be tolerated. Never! Instead I had to set up a faceless organization. I wrote seriously about this tragedy of his. Before that I was writing shallow things and nobody was really paying attention. "
Starvation Kills Hundreds of Indian Tea Garden Laborers
Syed Zarir Hussain
OneWorld South Asia
31 March 2004
GUWAHATI, Mar 31 (OneWorld) - Around 800 tea garden workers have died of starvation, with several surviving on wild roots and rats in the Indian state of West Bengal, where the closure of uneconomic plantations has rendered a million laborers jobless, says a rights group.
The deaths resulted from a combination of starvation, malnutrition, general debility and diseases among workers in the abandoned tea gardens in North Bengal, says a report by the Indian People's Tribunal on Human Rights and the Environment (IPT), a civil rights group based in India's financial capital, Mumbai.
Uniting Food, Farm and Hotel Workers World-Wide
IUF calls on Indian supreme court to protect tea workers
Posted to the IUF website 12-Apr-2006
New reports highlight workers' plight
The IUF and affiliated tea unions have agreed to launch public interest litigation in an attempt to get the Indian Government to act to protect thousands of tea workers on plantations in the tea producing states of West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerela.
The claim will be backed by two reports*, published today, highlighting the plight of workers on abandoned plantations and detailing the theft of workers provident fund, wages and other benefits by employers in North Bengal. On the 18 plantations covered the authors founds that total liabilities to workers were Rs.366,243,653.53, equivalent to Rs.21,340 per worker or about 17 months of wages. Copies of these reports can be obtained from….
The IUF estimates that 65,000 workers in West Bengal and over 100,000 workers have been affected by the crisis which has affected India's tea sector since 2001. Thousands of workers have starved to death since then despite attempts to get them food aid and other assistance.
In a letter to the Chief Justice of India to prepare for the case, the IUF calls on the court to:
1. Bring the erring employers of the closed/abandoned tea plantations immediately to justice and be made to pay the workers their pending wages, provident fund amount, gratuity, medical expenses and any such owing expenses. In cases where the employers have not deposited provident fund money even after deductions from workers wages, immediate steps be taken to oblige them to immediately deposit such amounts and to hold such employers responsible under the law;
2. Take immediate steps to see that henceforth no worker starve and starve to death and her/his family not be evicted from the plantations where the lease has expired or is likely to expire soon or is to be cancelled;
3. Allocate 5 acres of land per permanent worker of the closed / abandoned tea plantation and transfer the land to the name of each permanent worker of the plantation to grow food;
4. Create a relief fund, partly resourced from the assets of the abandoned plantations and other commercial interests owned by the planters and their companies, to assist the workers who have lost employment due to the crisis and to provide immediate relief to the suffering workers;
5. Develop a mechanism along with the planters and their companies to contribute towards immediate humanitarian aid for the affected plantation workers in the form of food, water and medicine in order to prevent further suffering among the workers and their families;
6. Immediately pin responsibility and ensure payment of benefits already owed to the workers and pay towards the loss incurred by the workers so far and fulfil all obligations under the law to prevent further suffering of the workers;
7. Investigate and review the process, which have led to the market-driven humanitarian crisis in the Indian tea industry."
* Study on Closed and Re-opened Tea Gardens In North Bengal by Anuradha Talwar, Debasish Chakraborty and Sarmishtha Biswas;
Nutritional survey of tea workers on closed, re-opened and open tea plantations of the Dooars region, West Bengal, India by Sarmishtha Biswas, Debasish Chokraborty, Sutay Berman, and Joshua Berman.
Click here for this report
The current situation is volatile, with tea garden workers threatening to revolt against the managements for locking out gardens without prior notice and snapping electricity and water supply to laborers' homes.
A senior leader of the tea workers community warns there will be an uprising across the tea belt and the violence could spiral out of control.
Amid increasing tensions, an IPT team, led by retired Mumbai high court judge and IPT chairman Hosbet Suresh, visited various closed plantations in March to assess the situation. The IPT decided to investigate reports of starvation deaths following a request by Swadhikar, a local rights group in the Jalpaiguri district of North Bengal.
The survey group reported the large-scale violation of human rights. Workers and their families were living within the gardens in sub-human conditions.
At least 25 tea gardens in North Bengal were closed during the past three years, turning more than a million workers jobless, after the managements decided to shut down operations citing poor economic viability.
The Swadhikar adviser, Vaskar Nandy, accuses the tea garden managements of leaving the workers in a lurch, predicting a "catastrophe" if the state and federal governments do not aid the laborers.
There are an estimated 160 gardens in North Bengal, which accounts for about 30 percent of India's annual tea production of 823 million kilograms. India is the world's largest tea producer and the beverage from North Bengal is regarded as one of the best brews. But the sagging global market for tea has drastically impacted India.
The US $1.5 billion-a-year Indian tea industry is tottering following a crash in prices in weekly auctions, besides a slump in exports of the beverage.
The cut in prices is largely attributed to the inferior quality tea being produced by various Indian gardens. Exports have decreased because of competition from cheaper beverages from countries like Sri Lanka, Kenya and Bangladesh.
As is usually the case in such situations, the slump has worst affected impoverished laborers. Tea garden workers' union leader Sagu Baraik says many of them are surviving on wild roots and rats.
For their part, though, captains of the tea industry, accused of closing down the gardens without bothering about the workers, reject allegations of starvation deaths.
The government health department is the competent authority to declare starvation deaths.
But, deputy secretary of the North Bengal chapter of the Indian Tea Association (ITA) P. Neog says the West Bengal government is yet to report any starvation deaths in tea gardens.
"The reports of starvation and deaths are far from reality," Neog remarks, while admitting the tea industry in the region is facing a crisis that resulted in the closure of a number of plantations.
Justifying the move, Neog explains, "Those gardens that closed down were unable to run due to spiraling costs of production. It was economically unviable to continue functioning."
He suggests that instead of pointing accusing fingers at the industry, the cause for the closures should be examined and measures taken to improve the situation.
Archive for the Tea Time Category
« Previous EntriesFinal Report: Malnutrition of Tea Workers
November 2nd, 2005 | By Joshua | 10 Comments »
We have completed our report on the malnutrition of workers on six Indian tea gardens. This is the reason we came to West Bengal, answering the call of a local NGO which had been looking for volunteers with public health and writing expertise (my wife, Tay, is a nurse and has completed numerous health surveys in West Africa). Eventually, I‘ll make the full report available for download; in the meantime, I’ve posted the Abstract and a few excerpts below. If you would like to receive the complete report, let me know (jberman@gmail.com) and I’ll be happy to send it.
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SUNIL SCARIA writes of their trials and tribulations. Published in the Hindu, 13 jan,2004
IT was 8.45 p.m. on March 7. Around 250 Raimatang tea estate workers were waiting for the tribunal to arrive. The tribunal was to have come at 5.00 p.m. But workers in the five gardens the tribunal visited earlier had endless tales of sufferings. We reach the "enclave" at 8.50 p.m. There is no electricity. Ever since the garden was closed, the electricity has been disconnected. Two lanterns were lit and we began recording their voices.
I moved aside to chat with 17-year-old Rakesh while the tribunal hearing was in progress. I had heard that many children had to drop out of schools and college. Rakesh was in his second year at a Siliguri college. I asked him if he still went to college. His reply was that he used to go once a month, but had stopped in the last four months because it cost about Rs. 30 a day to travel to Siliguri and get food for the day. His family hardly earned Rs. 50 and he had to work to augment the family income. He spoke about how young girls went to neighbouring states like Sikkim as domestic help or became sex workers to support the family.
Twenty-five-year-old Ratia Oraon (name changed) stands out against the green tea bushes in her pink sari and bright lipstick as she hurries down the ribbon-like walk of Palashbari tea estate towards the dingy labour lines. That is where her client, a labourer at Palashbari, stays. Ratia will be paid Rs. 30 an hour. Her customers are from Chamurchi, Haldibari, Mahabir tea estates, neighbouring Kanthalguri tea estate where she stays.
With the Kanthalguri estate closed since July 22, 2002, and starvation deaths becoming a regular feature (400 people have already died), a section of the women has resorted to prostitution as the only way out. "After lockout was declared in the garden, we plucked the leaves and sold them. Then we sold the trees for firewood and some people even sold the furniture, doors, and windowpanes of the manager's bungalow for food. There is nothing left now so we have taken to this. It is better than seeing my little brother die," says Ratia. Education is not the only thing that suffers. Tea plantations in India are witnessing an unprecedented human tragedy. Plantations in North Bengal have been feeling the heat for a couple of years now and the media has been highlighting the crisis, especially the plight of the workers. In view of the persistent reports of starvation and other abuses in the tea gardens of North Bengal, Swadhikar, a voluntary society of Jalpaiguri, requested Indian People's Tribunal (IPT) to visit the area in order to determine the facts and make recommendations on that basis. The Tribunal constituted a bench under Justice (Retired) Hosbet Suresh, which included Harsh Mander, Dr. Manas Dasgupta, Samar Nath Chatterjee, Gayatri Singh, Virginius Xaxa and Ranjit Sarkar.
The Tribunal visited six gardens, namely Kathalguri, Dheklapara, Ramjhora, Mujnai, Kalchini and Raimatang on March 7 and held public hearing on March 8, 9 and 10, in Jalpaiguri to record oral and written statements.
A study by the West Bengal Right to Food and Work Network showed that as many as 22 plantations, 21,000 permanent workers and about 95, 000 people have been affected in Jalpaiguri district alone. A door-to-door survey of 204 households in two plantations by the study team revealed an even more frightening picture. The average number of deaths a year was increasing by 241 per cent after closure of the plantations. The death registers show that most of the workers die due to blood dysentery and cardio-respiratory failure. However the majority of causes are either "not given" or "others".
There is an acute drinking water problem in all the gardens after they were shut down and the electricity and water supply was disconnected. People use river water for drinking. This water is highly contaminated with dolomite from the cement manufacturing factories. Even the ground water is unfit for drinking due to large-scale application of fertilizers, pesticides and agrochemicals in the tea gardens.
The causes for the problem are many. The most common is the fall in prices, which is attributed to over supply. But paradoxically tea prices fall while the demand for tea increases. It defies the supply-demand equation.
PARTH SANYAL
Children collecting wood for fuel instead of going to school.
Tea gardens are "enclaves", cut off from the surrounding people and economy. During the colonial period, labourers were hired from outside, given housing and incorporated into a new form of society dictated by the management and designed solely to suit the needs of the plantations. Tea plantation workers in eastern India are fourth-generation descendants of immigrants brought by the colonial planters 150 years ago from the tribal tracts of Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Nepal. Post independence, according to the Plantation Labour Act, 1951, the planters were to continue to provide healthcare facilities, transport, and elementary schools. The plantation sector still operates under the colonial legacy characterised by migrant labour, poor work conditions, low wages, and exploitative conditions. They are treated as secondary citizens and continue to live under sub-human conditions.
Zia-Ul-Alam, Secretary, Cha Bagan Majdur Union (associated with CITU) said, "The nature of the present phenomenon of lock out and abandonment of tea gardens in West Bengal during the last two years is quite different from the earlier trends. The gardens that have faced this problem are either those with declining productivity in terms of land (and not labour) and over-loaned (most even more than their total asset value). These planters have sucked the land of all its resources and have failed to invest anything in the land. Instead, they abandon the garden when the productivity of the land shows declining trends".
The tribunal found that there had been a large number of hunger-related deaths, resulting from a combination of starvation, malnutrition, general debility and disease, the number of deaths being not less than 800 in the six closed or abandoned gardens it visited. The Tribunal, in its interim report, came down heavily on the violations of human rights, of statutory obligations by the plantation managements, failure/inaction of the Central and State Governments in taking necessary action, and failure of the trade unions in protecting the workers. The Tribunal noted that the workers' right to food, work, healthcare and sanitation, education and decent living conditions had been severely curtailed.
The managements violated their statutory obligations by misappropriating huge amounts from the workers' earned wages, salaries, bonus, rations, earned leave, provident funds, gratuity, and life insurance. They also evaded their liabilities to the government exchequer. Many operational gardens are also following this trend of not paying the wages/salaries in time, not disbursing cereals in due time, not depositing the PF amount, not paying gratuity, paying three day's wages for six days of work and are pushing the workers and their dependants into starvation and death.
The Tribunal also noted that the inaction and indifference of the Central Government and the Tea Board. Under the Tea Act 1953, the Central Government has vast regulatory powers, particularly in relation to employers who have defaulted in the payment of wages and PF dues. The Centre and the Tea Board can initiate stringent measures against units if they are "managed in a manner highly detrimental to the tea industry or to public interest."
The Tribunal also criticised the State Government for the indifference showed to the workers illustrated by the fact that the 2002 Below Poverty Line survey did not include the workers of the gardens even after their closure for one and a half years. The Tribunal was also critical of the trade unions. It noted that if the trade unions had been united and taken prompt steps, the conditions of workers could have been different.
The Tribunal recommended:
Measures for medical help, food and potable water supply, transportation needed to be taken to prevent more hunger deaths in the gardens.
Prosecution of employers in order to recover dues and called for immediate cancellation of leases and setting up workers' cooperatives to run the gardens.
State Government take back a portion of leased-out land for the settlement and development of non-workers and/or temporary workers and their families.
Amendment of the PLA to provide for welfare measures under the Act, to be supervised by the local panchayats and the Block Development Officers.
Amendment of the Tea Act to assign a proper role to the State in the matter of proper supervision and running of the tea gardens.
The condition of workers in a land ruled by the workers' party is indeed sub-human. And the state is yet to realise that its duty is to protect its citizens from hunger and starvation.
The writer is the Joint Coordinator of the Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights (IPT). E-mail: iptindia@vsnl.net
Category: (d) India, Tea Time
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Going Organic in Darjeeling
October 29th, 2005 | By Joshua | No Comments »
I’d planned on being a plain old tourist in Darjeeling: Nothing to do but eat, drink, trek the Singalila, and visit the sites my guidebook told me to, (Snow Leopard enclosure, Mountaineering Institute, Ghoom Monastery, etc.). I also wanted to experience the unique culture of Nepalese-descended Indians, who make up 95% of the town’s population, and whose hospitality and cheerfulness are famous. After 10 days, I’ve succeeded in accomplishing all of the above—except the site-seeing and trekking. There are two reasons why:
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Category: (d) India, Tea Time, Darjeeling to Delhi (via the Buddha)
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A Fuller, Warmer Cup of Tea: Fair Trade 101
October 23rd, 2005 | By Joshua | 5 Comments »
October, I just learned, is Fair Trade Month, conveniently coinciding with my travels in Darjeeling and my discovery of a kinder, gentler side of India’s tea industry.
Where does your tea (or coffee, sugar, bananas, chocolate) come from? Knowing the answer to this question is the heart of understanding what Fair Trade is and why it is one of the most important movements of our time.
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Category: (d) India, Tea Time, Darjeeling to Delhi (via the Buddha)
Tags: (d) India, Darjeeling to Delhi (via the Buddha), Tea Time, Travel
Crumpets and Coal: Our First Proper Tea
October 22nd, 2005 | By Joshua | No Comments »
In Paris, we stayed with a French-Moroccan couple who fed us mint tea (at midnight, after dinner) in traditional gold-inlaid glasses; sweet mint tea followed us to the hookah bars of Dubai; then, in Pakistan and India we were deluged with dood chai—black tea with hot milk and sugar, served anytime, anywhere. In West Bengal, our roommates detested milk and sugar in their ca (pronounced “cha”), preferring their tea bitter, so this is what we drank during our two months in Birpara, where we lived and worked among green tea gardens and golden glasses of ca.
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Category: (d) India, Tea Time, Darjeeling to Delhi (via the Buddha)
Tags: (d) India, Darjeeling to Delhi (via the Buddha), Tea Time, Travel
Outstanding Article about the Indian Tea Crisis
October 7th, 2005 | By
