Is Tea Had Any Better?

A Darjeeling tea planter is training workers to take over his estate—to grow the best tea in the world.

This is one ‘Rajah’ who doesn’t want to live up to his name. In fact, this wealthy owner of India’s first and undoubtedly the country’s most well-known tea estate, is actively planning to parcel out the sprawling estate to his workers in less than two decades from now. And this would be one more pioneering achievement at Makaibari tea estate, about 7 km from the pretty town of Kurseong in Darjeeling Hills, which already has many illustrious firsts to its credit.

Makaibari’s owner Swaraj Kumar Banerjee, popularly known as ‘Rajah’, merges many laudable traits into his mesmerising personality. But the foremost would surely be his resolve to divide the 550 acres of his 1,674-acre estate (the remaining 1,124 acres are mostly woodlands) spanning six ridges, among his 636 workers. “I’m just a steward in passing at Makaibari. These workers have been here for generations now and the tea garden is actually theirs. I’m only planning to give back to them what truly belongs to them,” he tells Open.

But it’s not as simple as plotting the 550 acres and handing over the small plots to the workers to do as they please. The owner of this 150-year-old tea garden, known for his excellent entrepreneurial skills and innovative ideas, has drawn up a win-win scheme for the workers and himself. “The workers, who’ll become owners of the individual plots, will produce handmade tea, as the Chinese do,” reveals Banerjee. This tea fetches a high price in the international market and Banerjee is currently working on a technique of making it at Makaibari. His role, after giving away his estate to the workers, would be that of a partner and mentor. “I’ll run the factory and market the tea, and most of the profits would go to the plot-owners or the small growers,” he explains.

This egalitarian idea came to Banerjee from a personal experience. “I went to Mechi that’s just across our border with Nepal and saw the small tea gardens there. The yield from those small gardens is much higher and the quality is much better. That’s because the owners pay individual and close attention to their gardens, which is impossible in a big garden. And it then dawned on me that the future of Darjeeling tea lies in it being produced in small, individually owned gardens,” Banerjee says. His mantra is “partnership, not ownership”. The charismatic sexagenarian, arguably the most well known face of Darjeeling tea to the outside world, is now preparing his workers for the transition. “They have this self-imposed feeling of being mere workers. I’m trying to change this so that they inculcate the proper mindset of owners of the conglomeration of small gardens that Makaibari will become,” says Banerjee, who lives with his wife in a well-appointed bungalow that overlooks the tea estate.

The process of empowering the workers had, in fact, started 17 years ago in Makaibari with the formation of the ‘Makaibari Joint Body’ (MJB). It has 10 elected members from the seven villages inside the estate, and two persons nominated by the workers’ union, two by the management and two from the factory. Banerjee presides over the body that looks after all social development and even gives loans for small ventures. This MJB runs crèches, a library, a computer training centre, various vocational training courses for workers’ families, conducts health and hygiene initiatives throughout the year and offers healthcare, including pre- and post-natal care in the health centre it runs. These activities are run with funds obtained from the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO), an international body that accorded Makaibari its ‘Fairtrade’ certification in 1994, another first by a plantation in India. “FLO charges a small premium on all the products it has certified that are sold in the US and Europe. This premium is routed to the MJB for its various initiatives,” Banerjee says.

Another initiative by Banerjee was the gift of cows—1,200 of them—to workers’ families in the mid-1980s. “Today, the cows provide milk that’s a steady source of income for the families. The dung is processed to make compost that I purchase for the tea estate. The biogas generated is fuel for cooking, thus freeing the womenfolk from the rigour of collecting firewood, and also saving the forest consequently,” says Banerjee.

Another major project is the homestay for tourists that Banerjee encouraged a few years ago. “Workers who have spare rooms in their houses have converted these into guest rooms for the steady stream of volunteers from Western countries and the tourists we get. There are twenty such homestays that can accommodate 30 persons now. We’ll have more homestays soon when the Makaibari model village of ten houses comes up,” says Nayan Lama, 25, coordinator of the homestay project. The hosts earn Rs 350 a day for putting up guests. Loans and training are provided by the MJB to start such ventures. Sangeeta Biswakarma, a worker at Makaibari factory, started her homestay three years ago. “The money earned from that has gone towards providing good education to my daughters and a lot of material comforts,” she says. Many others have started small shops or purchased taxis with loans from the MJB or from Banerjee himself.

But Makaibari, as an idea, has transcended its boundaries. “We cannot be an oasis of prosperity in this desert of poverty,” says Banerjee, referring to the abysmal economic conditions in the Darjeeling Hills. Four years ago, Makaibari became an enthusiastic partner in the Community Health Advancement Initiative (Chai) project launched by Tazo Tea Company and Mercy Corps. Nearly 300 subsistence farmers in areas scores of miles away from Makaibari were motivated to plant tea bushes on their farmland. “We now buy the tea leaves from them at a 25 per cent premium since they’re totally organic,” says Banerjee. Yet another initiative is the handmade paper project that benefits 80 families at Lingtan village bordering Sikkim, who grow and supply a local shrub called ‘argeli’ to a women’s self-help group inside Makaibari. This group produces handmade paper from the shrub that is then screen-printed and used to pack Makaibari’s premium tea. “There are many such small ventures that benefit my partners (the workers) here and add to Makaibari’s good name,” says Banerjee.

This is all too evident to any visitor—the smiling visages of healthy workers, their children going to English-medium schools and the air of contentment around. Add to that the Rajah’s quest for empowering his ‘praja’, and you have the Zen-like Makaibari tea that, as Banerjee insists, incorporates all aspects of life in the garden. And that, for sure, makes for a fantastic brew.

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