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If you stand at a spot in the roughly 600-acre Baradighi Tea Estate in the Dooars region of north Bengal’s Jalpaiguri and draw an imaginary vertical line down the centre, a stark contrast would appear between the left and right halves.
On the left, a sprawling, British-era bungalow with a modern swimming pool and luxurious rooms accommodating tourists from across India and abroad. On the right, a cluster of tin-roofed, half-pucca houses, children sitting in the shade of a tree playing carrom, women walking in and out of the tea gardens.
The common thread between these two halves is their dependency on the tea garden – one through tourism and one through the tea business.
In February 2025, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that the government will allow 30 per cent of tea garden land to be diverted for purposes other than for producing tea.
Given the forested and hilly terrain, it was inevitable that tourism was to be the other purpose.
That business seems to be thriving with a regular influx of tourists. The other side is struggling. Stagnant wages and business have left the women and men of the area, employed by the gardens for generations, struggling to survive.
“Most of us have been living in houses that our ancestors had received from the tea estate owners during the British Raj,” said Bodu Munda, 38, who had just finished his shift at the tea factory.
This has been his first and only job. He stopped at the only tea shop near the tea factory before going back to the quarters that were allocated to his family by the colonial rulers. The house is showing its age, badly.
“Our houses are dilapidated. Our roofs leak. We don’t have the money to fix our homes. We can barely make ends meet,” Munda said.
There is a severe water crisis in the area. Munda and other tea garden workers said the water supply lasts for two hours in the morning only.
Rise and fall of tea gardens
The story of tea in north Bengal goes back to 1848. British efforts to cultivate tea in India were not successful. There was little knowledge on how to cultivate the tea, the heat, humidity and mosquitoes made conditions unbearable for the workers, and British planters were often corrupt, stealing company funds.
This is when the British East India Company hired Robert Fortune, a Scottish botanist, who seemed more of a spy and smuggler than a scientist. He secretly transported over 20,000 camellia sinensis seedlings from China to India using Wardian cases – named after their inventor, Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, these were sealed, glazed, wooden containers that created a self-sustaining microclimate, revolutionising the transport of live plants over long voyages – along with tea-making expertise and skilled Chinese workers.
After early failures in moving tea seeds, Fortune developed a successful method by sowing them in sealed cases. Once the plants reached Calcutta, he recruited experienced manufacturers from inland China to establish tea production in India.
“Upwards of twenty thousand tea-plants, eight first-rate manufacturers, and a large supply of implements were procured from the finest tea-districts of China, and conveyed in safety to the Himalayas,” he wrote back to his masters.
The success of that experiment, of planting tea in India, can be gauged even now, when the ruling party celebrates the prime minister’s “chaiwalla roots”. Indeed, tea has become synonymous with India.
But the golden period of the tea industry was until 1999 and the decline began around 2002, said Victor Basu of the Dooars Jagran Manch.
“Owners started abandoning gardens, declaring lockouts and keeping gardens closed for long periods. The first was the Kathalguri Tea Garden. After that, gardens started closing one after another. Between 2002 and 2004, around 14 gardens were closed. Some gardens are completely closed. Like Deklapara, which closed after 2004 and never reopened. Many gardens are ‘temporarily non-functional’ — perhaps they declared a lockout over a bonus issue and never reopened,” Basu told The Telegraph Online. “Some are functional but don't pay regular wages or lack facilities.”
Migration is another factor.
“The effect of migration is felt now whether the garden is closed or in good condition. Because wages in south India are much higher than the ₹250 here — they start at ₹500 plus – there is a migrant in every single family; not a single family is left where someone isn't going out. Some are seasonal migrants, some are permanent and some do one-year contract jobs and return.”
The state government is responsible for the daily wages of the tea workers.
“The gardens that closed after 2002 reopened around 2008 or 2009. At that time, their wages were provided through the MGNREGA. There was a political vacuum then. One government was on its way out and a new one was coming in [in Bengal]. Until 2013, almost all these gardens were running on MGNREGA,” Basu said.
The MGNREGA, or the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, has been rechristened and tweaked as VB-G-RAMG by the Centre. The Bengal government has often complained of the Centre not releasing money due to the state.
Basu said that the money from MGNREGA was used to pay the labourers. In lieu, they were cleaning drains or clearing weeds when the gardens were closed.
The decline of the tea industry is linked to global developments, said Supurna Banerjee, assistant professor at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
“The collapse of the Soviet Union was a big challenge to the industry. Because they were the primary buyer of Indian tea,” Banerjee told The Telegraph Online. “And the twin rise of Kenya and Sri Lanka as producers of cheaper tea than the specific variety of Bengal tea.
“Also, the bushes need to change every 30-35 years to keep production yield high,” she explained. “It can continue for a maximum of about 50 years. I think apart from a few big estates like Goodricke and Duncan many haven’t changed bushes in the last 80 years. It’s a high investment industry.”
Is tourism for tea helping the people?
The Baradighi Tea Estate has only employed residents of the estate in various roles.
“As the income from tea garden work isn’t enough, the younger generation is choosing to move away from tea garden work to not only survive but also get better living conditions,” said Daisy Raj Singh, group head of the bungalow, who has trained her employees to take up roles needed in the resort.
“I am giving them a way to take up other professions without having to migrate to far-off areas and develop their skills while earning a living.”
She also runs an NGO that helps local children.
Deepshika Baruah, Singh’s assistant and the one who looks after the resort when Singh isn’t around, was born and raised in these tea gardens. She studied English in college away from home and came back due to a family emergency. She said the resort was the best thing that has happened to her because she can stay near home, earn a proper income, build her career and also take care of her parents.
The estate has guests almost all year round; holiday seasons are almost always full. They said they earned enough to keep the resort running without hiccups.
Can tourism help the tea industry?
“I don’t think it will help, to be honest,” said Banerjee when asked if tourism could help the tea industry. “Tea tourism trajectory shows the idea is not to sustain workers or the plantation but profit of the companies. Are they plugging back that into the tea production by replacing the bushes?
“In theory, this may not be a bad thing,” she added. “But is it allowing the maintenance of the plantation? Are they thinking of the workers? The tea tourism idea is still peripheral.”
Rohit Parekh, head of department at the Baradighi Tea Estate, expressed concern over low crop yields because of the new FSSAI norms, a changing climate and the ongoing Middle East war hurting the export of tea, leaving the business in dire straits.“Right now, business from our tea gardens in Assam’s Jorhat and other areas is keeping this one alive, but I honestly don’t know for how long we can keep this up. We will do our best to keep this estate running,” Parekh told The Telegraph Online. “The bungalow is generating employment, but it is far from enough,” he added.
Darjeeling’s BJP MP, Raju Bista, had criticised Mamata’s move to open the tea gardens up for tourism the day after the announcement.
“This is an extremely dangerous proposition and I fear if this policy is allowed to be implemented without the protection of traditional land rights of the Gorkhas, Adivasis, Rajbangshis, Rabha, Koche, Meche, Toto, Bengali and other communities who are the indigenous people of our Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars, we will be rendered homeless,” Bista wrote on Facebook.
He quoted a standing committee on commerce report.
“The tea workers are in such dire straits that they have to approach the tea company to request for land even for burying their dead family members," the report said.
“In the name of "Tea Tourism", luxury hotels, including 5-star hotels and massive resorts, are already being constructed on the very lands that tea workers have cultivated for generations. Now the West Bengal government intends to open up the tea garden lands for Commercial Real-estate Development and other purposes. This is extremely worrisome,” Bista wrote.
“If this 30% land diversion is permitted, it will mean the end of the tea industry, as real-estates will take over, and tea garden workers and later the cinchona garden workers - who have been kept deprived of rights to their ancestral lands, may be similarly displaced.”
Tea workers make up a significant part of the population in around 14 Bengal Assembly seats. Dooars, where most tea estates are located, is spread across Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts.
Since 2016, the BJP has been winning in these areas. For example in Alipurduar, the BJP won all the five Assembly seats in 2021 and the Lok Sabha seat in 2024.
The region goes to vote in the first phase of the Bengal Assembly election on April 23.
