 |
| Darjeeling Tea Labors |
Once again Darjeeling is in the news for producing the highest priced tea ever sold. This time around, it has put Johnny Walker Blue Label to shame for all the 65 years put into blending it by just a simple handmade tea going for the same price. Yes, Makaibari Tea Garden this time sold for a whooping $1850 (`1.11 lakh) per kg.
Yes! Indeed the story of the Prestigious Darjeeling Tea goes way back to the days of the British Raj. Most of the Tea Gardens do have their folk lore of British Raj and more importantly the system is has remained the same over the ages.
However, Darjeeling Tea has its actual history dating way back to the mid-nineteenth century, and not only since the days of the Raj. So many years of Indian independence has somehow just passed them by and they still remain in the dark days that overpowered the whole country before 1947.
 |
| Darjeeling Tea Garden: People Who Make It |
Times have changed, tea prices have soared, but the people producing this magic with their hands
 |
| Life at Darjeeling: Tough but Ever-Smiling |
still remain empty handed.
However, life has always carried on for The Great Indian Mango People of the tea gardens labors and staff. Some of them would tell you about the drought days and how they survived on corn and homemade liquor, some would tell you about the agitation days, some would tell you about the days of lockout, and the remaining would tell you about the devastating landslide and other natural calamities that pluck out fresh lives off the people of the hills just as they pick the best tea leaves for us to savour the “Darjeeling”.
 |
| Waiting for the Winds of Change |
According to the Times of India, "Fair-trade plantation may seem like an oxymoron," Besky said. "Plantation workers are not small farmers. They are laborers who, like peasants, live and work on land they do not own."
Besky discusses the impact of fair trade and other movements that brought Darjeeling tea plantations into the 21st-century market for geographically distinguished and ethically sourced food, and into India's multiethnic democracy.
These movements have World Trade Organization Geographical Indication status, a distinction Darjeeling shares with famous place and food names like Scotch, Champagne, and Roquefort, and the Gorkhaland agitation, a longstanding movement to form an Indian state separate from West Bengal, to include Darjeeling, its tea plantations and its majority of Indian Nepalis, or Gorkhas.
"There is a deep disconnect between national, global and regional calls for justice, and the lives and work of the very people in whose names those calls have gone forth. The workers are keenly aware that in the market for justice, the tea plantation is not going anywhere." (
read report).
So the people wait…wait for the winds of change to come and strike a balance between their lives and the reputation and price of the tea they produce.
