The 105-day shutdown last year in the hills of Darjeeling has plunged tea estate owners and plantation workers into an unprecedented crisis. Planters who lost at least 70 per cent of their premium first and second flush crop—almost wholly exported estimate the combined value of the loss at Rs 500 crore. The dire situation has a precedence. In the mid-1980s, over 1,200 people perished as internecine clashes and violent government crackdowns engulfed Bengal’s hill districts during the ethnic Gor -
khas’ agitation for a separate Gorkhaland. The gardens suffered, along with their workers.

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