Beneficiaries of West Bengal government’s Chaa Sundari housing scheme express dissatisfaction, citing inadequate facilities and infrastructure that have dampened their dreams of owning their own houses.
The green, undulating hillside tea gardens of Darjeeling, flanking the high Himalayas, yield a product often described in that rapturous vocabulary usually reserved for fine wines – aristocratic, almost aphrodisiacal, with subtle notes of vegetal, mossy, fruity and citrusy flavours.
Darjeeling tea had conquered the world’s taste buds, but cracks often show up in that teacup.
Thousands of people work on tea plantations in the Darjeeling hills and Dooars of West Bengal, and many of them are descendants of men and women brought from neighbouring states by British planters in the 19th century and put to work in harsh conditions.
These life-long tea pickers are caught in an intergenerational cycle of labour, with no rights to land or a home of their own. The children have had to take on their parents’ jobs to retain tied housing, called labour quarters, at the plantations when their parents retire.
Workers are generally indentured, and often face exploitation in remote areas with limited access to welfare services. With daily wages of a little over Rs 200, they can hardly nurture ambitions of life beyond the confines of hardscrabble plantation work.
But the long-standing system is facing an unprecedented challenge lately. A revolution is brewing in the gardens, with people demanding land, housing and basic amenities in a quest to end the cycle of misery — change the status quo.
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The West Bengal government chipped in by initiating its much-hyped Chaa Sundari housing scheme in 2020, which promised to be a beacon of hope for the hardworking tea garden workers. With a projected cost of Rs 500 crore, it was anticipated to benefit tea workers living below the poverty line in the state’s 370 plantations.
Laxmi Oraon, a 38-year-old worker at Dheklapara tea estate in Alipurduar district, is one of the beneficiaries of the housing scheme. She recently moved into her new house, located on vacant government land near the tea garden.
The decision to move was driven by the need for more space, as the staff quarters in the tea garden were overcrowded for her seven-member family. The new house boasts two rooms, a hall, a kitchen and a toilet, along with essential utilities like electricity and water supply.
However, Oraon’s heart remains tethered to her old thatched house, only 2km away. The shiny new home fails to fulfil her needs. There’s no vacant land outside for keeping livestock, which forms an essential part of their livelihood to supplement their meagre wages.
The absence of space poses a significant threat.
“It is not possible to keep our livestock unguarded in the old house, as wild animals lurking in the tea gardens could attack them,” Oraon said.
In the picturesque Dheklapara tea estate, 327 houses have been built, but only a handful of families have moved in. Sadhani Kachua, a 55-year-old tea picker, shares her struggle with the expenses of using gas cylinders for cooking. The monthly cost of refilling the cylinders, around Rs 1,200, is a financial burden for the workers. Consequently, they resort to cooking with firewood from the forest, which is not permitted inside the new houses due to fire hazards, leading them to cook under the open sky, resulting in difficulties during the rainy season.
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Moreover, the houses, constructed with tin sheets, become sweltering during extreme summer, driving them outdoors.
The families are also apprehensive about house ownership after the retirement of the designated household member, or if no other family member takes up a job in the tea garden as a replacement.
The uncertainty leaves them pondering whether the house will remain theirs or if they will be forced to vacate.
“There has been no word about it from the administration,” said Nakul Biswakarma, whose mother was given the new house.
Furthermore, the tea garden workers accuse the tea garden management of providing inadequate medical facilities and inconsistent job opportunities. Many retired or deceased workers’ family members are only given short-term work, leaving them in financial hardship.
Shekhar Gowala, a member of the tea workers’ union, alleges that the government, in its pursuit of promoting tourism near the tea gardens, may have inadvertently displaced the very workers it sought to help. However, local Trinamool Congress leader Sarwan Sahani refutes such claims, stating that the government’s intention is to offer better facilities to them for a more comfortable life.
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The West Bengal government has initiated the distribution of house keys as part of its much-anticipated and much-hyped scheme. Despite the efforts, it is evident that there are challenges to address in terms of adequate facilities, livelihood opportunities and ownership uncertainties, which require comprehensive solutions for the well-being of tea garden workers.
The lead image at the top shows workers at a tea plantation in Darjeeling, West Bengal (Photo by Gurvinder Singh)
Gurvinder Singh, a journalist based in Kolkata.
