West Bengal - Poverty, Disease and Starvation in Jalpaiguri

[Ronan Kelly]

'Death has become part of our lives'
TNN | Jun 30, 2014, 12.39 AM IST

JALPAIGURI: Nearly every top official of the Jalpaiguri district administration was present at the Raipur Tea Estate since Sunday morning to greet state food supplies minister Jyotipriya Mullick and minister in charge of North Bengal affairs Gautam Deb who were on a fact-finding mission to the tea garden where at least six persons, including infants, have died in the last as many days due to starvation and malnutrition. Local Trinamool Congress leaders and workers also gathered en masse near the tea garden office that had assumed the look of a site where a political meeting is to be held.

It has been raining in Jalpaiguri for the last several days and barely a few hundred yards away, the Gudam (Godown) Line - one of the eight 'Coolie Lines' in the tea estate - remained virtually cut off from the place of activity. In places, the muck was ankle deep and the kutcha drain had overflowed on to the unpaved pathway running in between unkempt shanties. Such was the condition that the local BDO had had to turn back after taking a few steps into the lane that stank of disease, death and general decay.
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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...me-part-of-our-lives/articleshow/37483857.cms

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: West Bengal - Poverty, Disease and Starvation in Jalpaiguri

Death in closed Redbank
Jul 21, 2014 dtadmin Business, General, News Comments Off

Siliguri, July 20: A worker of the closed Redbank tea estate died on Friday night, days after the government announced food grain and health care initiatives for shut estates in north Bengal.

The immediate reason that caused the death of 45-year-old Puney Munda was cardiac arrest but other garden residents said Munda had been suffering from general weakness for some time.

Deaths in closed tea gardens have been attributed to malnourishment by NGOs and local health workers, but the government has never officially accepted this.
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http://darjeelingtimes.com/death-in-closed-redbank/

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: West Bengal - Poverty, Disease and Starvation in Jalpaiguri

Death, hunger stalk Indian tea-estate workers

BUNDAPANI, India - Death arrived soon after the Bundapani tea estate closed last year.
Deprived of health care and food rations, workers who had been scraping by on $1.50 per day were left with nothing. Bundapani's owner didn't raise the alarm for two months as the workers, abandoned at the feet of the Himalayas, slid silently into catastrophe.
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Seven workers died in the two months it took the government to become aware of the crisis, and the toll has continued to climb since. In the past year, at least 69 tea workers have died across Bundapani and four other shuttered tea plantations in West Bengal, according to the Right to Food campaign, an advisory committee to the Supreme Court that is monitoring the deaths. More than 16,000 people have been left in extreme poverty at the estates, spread across the Dooars plains below Darjeeling, source of the famous brand known as the Champagne of teas.
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http://www.the-news-daily.com/death-hunger-stalk-indian-tea-estate-workers_243952

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Starvation Deaths In Bengal?s Tea Estates ? People Forced To Eat Rats And Snakes Due to Extreme Poverty

Written by: Zohaib Rauf | News, Image Source: Partha Paul, Indian Express
?Chai pe Charcha? is one of the favourite hobbies of Indians. With a sip of tea, anybody can talk about anything except the workers who grew the tea leaves and are now starving to death.

It is estimated that 1400 people died in 2000-10 alone due to malnutrition. Around 80 people died due to starvation in 2015 alone.

In November?2015, the Indian Express reported on the story of a woman named Dukhni, 30, who was reduced to a skeleton and barely able to move and confined to her bed, she watched her husband put their evening meal together with all that was left ? a handful of rice and four potatoes when he broke down, ?Dukhni is unlikely to survive. Doctors say she needs two packets of blood, but we don?t have the money.?
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http://thelogicalindian.com/story-f...o-eat-rats-and-snakes-due-to-extreme-poverty/