Workers in Darjeeling’s tea industry should be paid better and given access to social security, experts say, adding that this is important not just for workers but for the tea industry to prosper.
The production costs for Darjeeling tea have increased, while the price has not increased enough, putting the industry that produces the ‘champagne’ of Indian teas, at risk
Since February 7, Sumendra Tamang and his friends have been campaigning in the Darjeeling hills, the terai and dooars areas, talking to workers in the and cinchona gardens, landless labourers and farm-hands, explaining to them why they must not vote for the BJP. They are singing songs and enacting plays at street corners in front of harried tea workers taking a break during lunch hour and laterin the evenings, outside bustees in the plains and hills.
“We are trying to find out who the better enemy is,” says Tamang, a 30-year-old economics graduate from Jadavpur University who now describes himself as an anti-Fascist activist .