The rolling tea gardens of North Bengal normally a vision of serenity with mist swirling over green slopes now speak of desperation today. Flash floods have devastated this peaceful landscape within days, leaving it a vision of ruin behind them, with shattered bushes, flooded roads, and thousands of nervous workers speculating what the morning would bring.
Heavy rain lashed tea estates that already suffered from unpredictable weather this year in the Dooars and Terai areas. Whole garden divisions of Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar remain under water. The floods not only ruined the current crop they ruined plantations, destroyed plants, and left behind silt over vast tracts of land. “Nothing like this ever happened before,” said Malbazar tea plucker Sushmita Rai, gazing out over a field that is so full of water it looks like a mud lake. “We were going to pluck leaves. We have no job, no pay, nothing.”
The timing could not be worse for the tea industry. October will see the last and most important flush of the season, the season that makes so much of the year’s profit. Now, the losses to output are calculated at up to 25 percent, a loss that will amount to crores of rupees. But to the residents of the workers’ colony, the loss is not bitter. Their homes flooded, their ration shops shut down, and their wages withheld at night.
Dozens of small farmers—dozens, really, the backbone of the Dooars’ tea economy are bound to be ruined. “The water washed away not only my crop but my hope,” said Banarhat farmer Ranjit Oraon. “Even if the bushes come back, the soil has lost its firmness. We will take months to get back on our feet.”
The local populace has called for immediate relief from the government, but it has been slow to arrive. With roads destroyed and estates isolated, assistance is not reaching inner gardens. Experts believe such unusual conditions, driven by global warming, could become the new reality of the North Bengal tea belt.
As the waters recede gradually, they deposit on the land more than rubbish. They deposit skepticism—the kind that looms so darkly over a nation that was once filled with the scent of fresh tea leaves and peaceful fantasies.
