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In the past 10 years, the West Bengal government under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has incurred huge debt. This has been a result of their faulty economic policies and priorities. Instead of deploying productive capital for the development of infrastructure, educational institutes, health facilities and other employment generating and growth inducing efforts, the state has indulged in wasteful spending of capital. As a result, the burden of debt on the state and its people has been steadily rising.
The state has been struggling with both fiscal and revenue deficits. Revenue deficit happens when the government spends more than it earns. In the past five years, the revenue deficit for West Bengal has been over Rs 1.08 lakh crore.
In the same period, the fiscal deficit, which measures the difference between government's total expenditure and its total revenue, has increased by Rs 2.41 lakh crore. The overall debt burden on the state has grown up to over Rs 7 lakh crore, and in the past fiscal year alone, over Rs 42,000 crore was spent by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government towards servicing this debt.
For a revenue deprived state, one can imagine the immense pressure the debt burden puts on the people.
In the past five years alone, the revenue shortfall was Rs 1.08 lakh crore, and the state overspent Rs 2.42 lakh crore, most of it borrowed from the market. Unable to meet their financial obligations, the West Bengal government introduced a policy of converting the status of commercial land from leasehold to freehold, for a fee.
This is being done by a highly inefficient and corrupt government to shore up their revenue to meet their financial obligations.
Under the leasehold system, the government remained the owner and commercial properties were leased out for a period ranging from 30 years to 99 years. These land could be used for the specific purposes for which they were handed out. But the West Bengal government is now handing over land to corporations on a freehold basis.
A freehold property means the owner has complete and absolute ownership of the land, which means the corporations can do whatever they want to with the land, and the government will have no say in it. In short, the West Bengal government is selling off public land to private companies for generating revenue, as all other sources of revenue have dried up in the state.
In this background, the announcement by Banerjee in the recent edition of Bengal Business Summit of allowing 30 per cent land in the tea gardens to be diverted to non-tea purposes presents a clear and present danger to the indigenous Gorkhas, Adivasis, Rajbangshis, Bengali, Rabha, Koche, Meche, Toto and other communities of Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars.
For generations, the tea garden and cinchona garden workers from our region have been denied and deprived rights to their ancestral land by succeeding West Bengal government. Majority of the tea garden workers have lived in these tea gardens since ancestral times, and well before our region was made a part of West Bengal, which happened only in 1954.
Before its merger with West Bengal, the Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars were governed under a separate and unique administrative framework, on the virtue of the region being leased land governed by various treaties like the Deed of Grant between the British Crown and the Kingdom of Sikkim, and the Treaty of Sinchula with Bhutan.
From 1861 until 1870, the region was governed as a “Non-Regulated Area,” from 1870-74 as a Regulated Area, from 1874-1919 as a Scheduled District, from 1919-1935 as a Backward Tract, and from 1935-47 as a Partially Excluded Area.
As the British had leased Darjeeling from the Kingdom of Sikkim, the region was not directly part of British India. As a result, the laws and regulations applied to the rest of West Bengal were not automatically applicable to Darjeeling. Instead, the Governor of Bengal would have to specifically extend these laws to the region on a case-by-case basis, further contributing to its distinctive administrative history.
It is pertinent to note here that till 1954, the land laws of West Bengal were not applicable in Darjeeling tracts. It was only following the passing of The Absorbed Areas (Laws) Act, 1954, that rules and laws governing West Bengal were extended to Darjeeling also.
In 1955, when the West Bengal Estates Acquisition (Amendment) Act was passed, an amendment was made to the West Bengal Estates Acquisition (Amendment) Act, 1953 and the following amendment was made: “Provided that in such portions of the district of Darjeeling as may be declared by notification by the state government to be hilly portions, an intermediary shall be entitled to retain all agricultural land in his khas possession, or any part thereof as may be chosen by him.”
Here, it is important to note that the “intermediary” happen to be tenants / individuals who had been in possession of such agricultural land. Because of the limited wages granted by the Tea Companies under the British, almost all tea garden workers were allocated land for their personal agricultural purposes.
So going by the Act of 1955, all the people of Darjeeling District, which till 1970s comprised the Dooars region too, should have been allocated parja patta to the land they were using for their personal purposes, but this was not done. Instead, the state has continued to deny the tea garden, and cinchona garden workers, those living in Darjeeling Improvement (DI) Fund land and forest villages in the Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars right to parja patta of their ancestral land.
The threat of displacement faced by the indigenous people of the Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars following the diversion of 30 per cent tea-garden to non-tea purposes cannot be overstated. Already the indigenous population has been diluted following unabated settlement of Rohingyas and illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, who are being allowed to settle in the region by the state government as their “vote bank”.
The diversion of land from the tea industry began at 15 per cent in 2019 and has already reached 30 per cent in 2025. The rate at which the TMC government is going, it may soon permit entire tea gardens to be diverted. This is where the real threat to indigenous people of the region comes in. Around 99 per cent of them have been kept deprived of parja patta to their ancestral land. Now, since the land is being handed over on “freehold” basis, the corporations who have bought the land from the government will require the landless workers to exit from their land.
This is not a far-fetched conspiracy; we have witnessed this play out in Chandmuni tea garden near Darjeeling More in Matigara, where over 1,500 workers and their families (around 15,000 individuals) were evicted to make way for the development of a gated housing society and a shopping mall. The workers were forcefully evicted and even shot at by the West Bengal police, with a former chief minister justifying the killing of the workers as being “necessary”.
I am fearful that such a scenario will unfold in the future if due care is not taken today.
Since 2005, Foreign Direct Investment in India's real estate and tourism sector has grown significantly. A critical geography like Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars, that lie in the heart of India’s “chicken neck” will attract immense interests, especially from the nations that are inimical to India’s interests. A freehold land system here will give immense leverage to those interested in harming India.
As such, the West Bengal government has completely failed to check the growing influences of foreign agencies or foreign-funded terrorist organisations in the state. The National Investigation Agency have busted several ISI agents, even Al Quaeda and JeM Bangladesh terrorist modules and networks from the state. The threat posing our nation by this dangerous policy proposed by TMC government in West Bengal is real.
The West Bengal government can demonstrate its commitment to the region by immediately initiating the process to grant parja patta to all the ancestral land of the tea garden workers, cinchona garden workers, DI Fund and forest villages. This would not only protect the land rights of the indigenous communities, but also ensure that the resources and benefits generated from these land are also accrued to the local people.
Darjeeling and Dooars tea are renowned globally, and they carry immense potential to generate employment and revenue, if given proper focus. Instead of using the tea garden land as land banks for the real-estate sector and short-term revenue generation sources, the West Bengal government would be better served by transforming these gardens into sustainable profitable units. This can be achieved by either incentivising corporations to invest in these gardens through production-linked incentives and better marketing for their tea internationally, or by empowering the tea garden workers to run the gardens as cooperatives.
The tea gardens in Darjeeling and Dooars are not just economic enterprises, rather they are the very thread that binds the people of our region together, and we will not allow this thread to be severed at any cost.
Raju Bista is the Member of Parliament from Darjeeling, and BJP National Spokesperson. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.