Dream Flowers – A collection of Contemporary Poetry by Barun Roy

Author: Barun Roy

Language: English

Price: Rs. 60.00

Published by Beacon Publications, Darjeeling

A collection of Contemporary Poems by Barun Roy

Please Vote for Prakriti Giri Today and Tomorrow

Voting lines opens tonight 10 pm and closes on March 16, Sunday midnight

New drumbeats in the Darjeeling hills

By Marcus Dam

The Darjeeling hills of West Bengal are bristling with nervous anticipation. A new era in local politics is being ushered in. Subash Ghising, who till recently boasted that he was the region’s “raja and not the subject,” has capitulated to the demands of his one-time protégé Bimal Gurung. Mr. Ghising has let go of the reins of power after reigning unchallenged in the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) since its formation two decades ago.

The transition comes at a time when the rumblings of the demand for a separate Gorkhaland state, to be carved out of the hills and certain contiguous areas, reverberate louder than ever before. Mr. Gurung may have assumed the stewardship of the movement for statehood, but his wily mentor is not one to be shaken off easily.

Doing a somersault, a cornered Mr. Ghising has reverted to the Gorkhaland demand. He was the first to have raised it in the 1980s. Some years later, it catapulted his former associate-turned-principal adversary into the political spotlight.

By all appearances, the stage is set for the next round in the tussle between the two. Meanwhile, the threat of a fresh spell of unrest casts its shadow on the valleys. The likelihood of two parallel movements for statehood looms large.

Protest threat in demand for tea wage hike

Siliguri, March 14: Trade unions in the tea sector today threatened to launch an industry-wide movement from next month if the wages and salaries of around five lakh employees are not revised from April 1.

The three-year treaty according to which tea workers are currently paid will expire on March 31.

This time, the unions want the period of service of workers to be taken into consideration while calculating the revised pay under the new agreement.

The Coordination Committee of Tea Plantation Workers an apex body of tea trade unions, has proposed a scale of Rs 3,120-4,445 for permanent workers in service for 25 years. Those engaged in factories, spraying assignments and irrigation should be paid in the range of Rs 3,400-4,725 under the new scale, said Ziaur Alam, a Citu district secretariat member of Jalpaiguri.

Siege & search warning from DM

Darjeeling, March 14: The Darjeeling district magistrate today warned the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha that the administration would not tolerate the confining of individuals to their residences or offices.

Ever since Morcha supporters traced some DGHC files to the residences of former officers of the council, the party has been trying to gherao the houses of retired councillors and lay siege to offices.

Rajesh Pandey, the district magistrate, said any person demanding a search of individual offices or residences would first have to lodge a complaint with the subdivisional magistrate (SDM), in this case the subdivisional officer.

“The SDM will hold an initial inquiry and if there is prima facie evidence, he will depute an officer to conduct the search. If the procedure is not followed, police will take action,” said Pandey, who is also the principal secretary of the DGHC.

New hill council head lists priority projects

Darjeeling, March 14: Drinking water, rural electrification and repair of roads top the priority list of the new caretaker administrator of the DGHC.

B.L. Meena, the divisional commissioner of Jalpaiguri, who is now at the helm of hill council affairs, said more meetings would have to be held to streamline the projects. He had called the council officers at Indira Gandhi Conference Hall in Lal Kothi here today to review the status of the schemes and prioritise them on a need basis. [Inset: Meena (left) and Pandey at the meeting in Lal Kothi. Picture by Suman Tamang]

The three-hour meeting was attended by heads of various departments, who apprised the administrator of the pending work at hand.

Sources said the council has already received around Rs 20 crore for rural electrification under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojna and the total funding could touch the Rs 75-crore mark.

Rush for Morcha posts in chaotic meet – Calm after the storm

Kalimpong, March 14: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s meeting to select a new set of office-bearers in different wings of the Kalimpong branch witnessed a lot of drama today with party members shouting slogans for their favourite candidates.

The drama unfolded at the Town Hall where hundreds of activists had assembled from early in the morning. At the very start of a rather chaotic meeting it became apparent that the selection of office-bearers would be anything but a smooth affair with activists openly hankering over posts. [Inset: Bimal Gurung, the Morcha president, felicitates supporters of the party who were on hunger strike demanding the scrapping of the Sixth Schedule bill at the Town Hall on Friday. The felicitation took place after the selection of office-bearers. Picture by Chinlop Fudong Lepcha]

Some sections of the jam-packed auditorium resorted to sloganeering in support of their respective candidates.

When it became obvious that tussle for positions in the party was being enacted in the open, Morcha secretary Roshan Giri took the microphone and requested journalists to leave, forgetting for the moment that they had been invited by the party.

Has Prakriti Giri bashing become routine at Chhote Ustaad!

By Barun Roy

Amit and Prashant may have fought it all and ended being best friends, can history repeat itself with Prakriti and Aishwarya?

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Kunal Ganjawala is certainly the must abusive of the Judges!
Prakriti Giri reached the top three of the Amul Chhote Ustaad hosted by Star Plus tonight but the reality struck quickly when Prakriti Giri desired instead to be voted out than being voted in. The youngest of the three all girl contestants left in the Amul Chhote Ustaad Contest Prakriti Giri was declared the ‘most inadequate of singers’ among the three. In fact, Kunal Ganjawala one of the Judges of the show while consoling the last male contestants on his way out said, “We had given you high marks and in our view you were the winner but instead you have to leave. You were better than Prakriti.” The abuse that Prakriti Giri and her mother have been receiving could be seen on their faces where both the daughter and the mother seemed happy at Prakriti being sent to the Scary Zone for the second time. Of the entire contestants who performed badly, is Prakriti the only one visible to the Judges? If the best singer was to be chosen why ask the people to vote the best singers when 90 per cent of the voters vote from their heart and having no knowledge of the art of singing do not involve themselves with the intricacies of pitch, ragas and the rest? If Aishwarya Majumdar, one of the contestants presently in the first rank can request for her state to vote for her and the Judges themselves request all the Bengalese and Assamese to vote for Aishwarya Majmudar just because she is Bengali, what are the Gorkhas/Nepalese doing wrong by voting for Prakriti Giri? And yet this is not the first time either that Nepalese/Gorkha contestants have been abused. Prashant became the first victim of abuse at the hand of the Bollywood, Musician, Singer, Lyricist Judge Trio who made it a point to make Prashant feel bad about this victory and to make him feel that he never deserved it. The same story seems to be advertently repeating.

True there can be no democracy in Arts, the best must always triumph but was it Prashant or Prakriti who created the rules of public voting. It was the people who created the show and the Judges are fully aware of it. Yet, why such abuse?

India: Largest Tea Producer and Consumer

By Vimal Khawas

India is the largest tea producer and consumer in the world. It produced 854 million Kilograms of tea and consumed 673 million Kilograms in the year 2001. The last 60 years of the country particularly after the Independence saw Indian tea growth over 250 percent. Today it accounts for about 31 percent of the global production of tea with the total turnover of around Rs. 10,000 crores. The country exports over 180 million Kilograms of tea every year earning net foreign exchange of around Rs 1847 crores per annum. India has over 13,000 tea estates with a combined acreage of about one million, most of it in northern India. The sector employs close to one and a half million people with foreign participation in the majority of tea plantations at 25-30 percent .

The credit for creating India’s vast tea empire goes to the British, who discovered tea in India and cultivated and consumed it in enormous quantities between the early 1800’s and India’s independence from Great Britain in 1947. The Scottish adventurer, Robert Bruce, discovered tea plants growing in Assam in the 1820’s. At this time, no one thought that tea existed in India; however Major Bruce discovered the plants growing wild in the jungles controlled by the tribal chiefs. The British East India Company’s monopoly in China ended in 1832 and it became necessary to find other sources to supply the English consumers of tea. In 1834, a tea committee was appointed to investigate the possibility of cultivating tea in India. After a thorough investigation and study of the crop, the first commercial batch of tea ever produced outside of China came from Assam in 1839. The first contract for Indian teas between 500 and 1,000 chests was issued by London brokers at that time .