North Bengal and Tea

North Bengal in India has many tea plantations. The workers are tribal laborers brought in by the British from Central India because they are considered "hardworking and obedient."

The tea harvest is difficult and backbreaking. The workers picking only the young, green leaves, must be really fast. They get paid 150 rupees a day for their work. That is the price of a cappuccino at the airport. If they are not fast enough, their pay is docked.

There is an empty space left at the bottom of the tea bush for an animal to seek shade and shelter in the sweltering heat. And sometimes female leopards with their cubs, asleep in that space, are startled from their slumber and attack the pickers. Mary Roach wrote in her book, Fuzz, that "Ninety percent of leopard attacks happen in North Bengal on tea estates."

Elephant herds, protected by the government can destroy entire fields of vegetation in less than a day and attack humans who cannot fight back. How could they? One of their gods, Ganesh, has the face of an elephant.

Humans are encouraged to fight back with noise makers and flares to scare the elephants away. Even if they tried to shoot the elephants, their skin is too thick for most conventional guns and their thick skin cannot be pierced. There are retaliatory killings of elephants, humans kill three to five elephants a year in such a manner.

The government uses elephants as soldiers and, when they retire them, they give them a pension, so to speak, and a place to live out the rest of their lives.

Elephant herds charge and trample people, their shanty homes, and their small crops of vegetation. Often an entire year's worth of work is gone and people cannot fight back.

It seems that India protects animals better than they do humans. For example, the government of Delhi announced in 2019 that it "planned to revamp the five sanctuaries it maintains for the city's free-ranging, traffic-snarling, sacred cows." Upon criticism that the government provided more for cows than for its citizens, the Minister of Animal Husbandry announced, "We are planning a unique coexistence programme where elderly will be allowed to stay with the cows."

If that is shocking, consider this, the Prime Minister, Narenda Modi, bestowed personhood status to the Ganges River. A river has human rights protection!

If you enjoy a cup of tea, remember the poor workers who have to fight to survive so much adversity, for so little pay.