West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing “surprise and shock” at the Centre’s unilateral appointment of an interlocutor for the “issues relating to Gurkhas in Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars regions of West Bengal”.
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.
Queen of hill stations, Darjeeling is in the news for the wrong reasons. It has been pushed to the edge of a precipice owing to unsustainable development, climate change and lack of institutional will to remedy matters.
