Death, hunger stalk workers as tea estates close in India

Conditions grim despite food and medical relief from government

Death arrived soon after the Bundapani tea estate closed last year.

Deprived of healthcare and food rations, workers who had been scraping by on $1.50 per day were left with nothing. Bundapani's owner didn't raise the alarm for two months as the workers, abandoned at the foot of the Himalayas, slid silently into catastrophe.

"I have become like a beggar," said Ramesh Mahali, 59, struggling to stand. He has been unable to properly feed himself or his family since the closure.

His wife, Puliya, seeming to be 20 years older than her age of 50, sat emaciated on the floor, her tiny arms mummified by malnutrition. She cannot move anymore, so Ramesh cannot leave her to look for work. Nearby, his daughter-in-law stared upward, suffering from tuberculosis. Beneath her, the dirt floor of the house was slowly being eaten away by the rains.

Seven workers died in the two months it took the government to become aware of the crisis, and the toll has continued to climb since. In the past year, at least 69 tea workers have died across Bundapani and four other closed tea plantations in West Bengal, according to the Right to Food campaign, an advisory committee to India's Supreme Court, which is monitoring the deaths. More than 16,000 people have been left in extreme poverty at the estates, spread across the Dooars plains below Darjeeling, source of the famous brand known as the champagne of teas.

The government has launched emergency food and medical relief, but conditions remain grim. Despite the aid, 14 people at Bundapani alone have died in the past eight months, either from malnutrition or inadequate medical care.

Dozens of men have left to find work, but women and those too weak to travel - like the Mahalis - remain in houses on the estate, where 7,000 people still live.

In estates visited by The Associated Press, many workers were clearly underfed and a number were suffering from diseases commonly related to malnutrition, such as tuberculosis. Several people said relatives had died recently. Many were skipping meals, living on rice broth.

2 kg of rice a week

The government relief - 2 kilograms of rice a week per worker - falls below standard rations at refugee camps.

Their situation highlights how eastern India's tea industry has changed little since colonial times. The decisions of individual estate owners still determine the fates of whole communities.

The government has done little to penalize owners who abandon their workers, and in practice, they have few obligations beyond their own conscience to ensure workers' well-being. Powerless, workers are dying in a system closer to the 19th century than the 21st.

"This is kind of the last hangover of a straightforwardly colonial relationship," said Harsh Mander, special adviser on food to India's Supreme Court.

Tea covers most of the plains of Darjeeling. Mile after mile of shiny green bushes, shaved flat into cubes, look like a giant hedge maze.

Established by the British in the 1830s, the plantations are among the only examples of large-scale organized agriculture in India, where most farming is done by smallholders. The plantations became a quintessential image of empire, and Darjeeling itself is still popularly known for its Raj-era holdouts, living the gin-touched days of gentlemen recluses.

Colonial plantations relied on indentured laborers. Workers now have the right to leave and access to free primary education, but their dependency on the estates for housing and food means that in practice, little has changed.

Tea worker Ramesh Mahali (right), 59, and his wife, Puliya Mahali, 50, have suffered from malnutrition since the tea estate where they in Bundapani, in the Indian northeastern estate of West Bengal, closed a year ago. Manish Swarup / Associated Press

(China Daily 09/30/2014 page11)