Strike affects Indian tea region

By Subir Bhaumik
BBC News, Calcutta

Protesters say talks have failed to help so far

An indefinite strike called by a regional political party has affected life in India's tea-producing Darjeeling hills in West Bengal state.

The strike, called by the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), began on Monday.

State Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya has appealed to the GJM to call the strike off and negotiate.

The GJM is demanding a separate state and fairer treatment for Darjeeling's Nepali-speaking Gorkha community. Its leaders have rejected calls for talks.

'Great restraint'

"Negotiation so far has yielded no result. And how can we respond to the Bengal government's appeal when they refuse to shift police officers who are oppressing us?" GJM chairman Bimal Gurung told the BBC.

But the state's chief secretary Ashok Mohan Chakrabarty refused to shift the police officials the GJM wants out of Darjeeling region.

"The police have so far acted with great restraint but they have to do their duty. And we have to back them," he said.

The GJM campaign has led to much violence and many deaths this year.

It was suspended when elections to the Indian parliament were announced.

The GJM backed a candidate of India's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - former foreign minister Jaswant Singh - in the elections.

Mr Singh won the Darjeeling parliament seat with a huge margin in a state where his party otherwise fared poorly.

Now Mr Singh has come out in open support of the demand for a separate "Gorkhaland" and that seems to have boosted the GJM campaign all over again.

Tourism fears

"Why does West Bengal wants to hold on to Darjeeling? The demography and politics of this area is totally different from the rest of the state," GJM general secretary Roshan Giri says.

"If Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh can be carved out of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, why not Gorkhaland out of Bengal," he asked?

The strike has hit tourism very hard - and may hit tea production, the other mainstay of the hill economy.

"Darjeeling is one of the main attraction for Bengali tourists, but now they are fleeing Darjeeling," said Ellora Dasgupta of Calcutta-based Neptune Holidays.

Darjeeling is also famous for British-era residential missionary schools, but students from the plains have started leaving the hill region for fear of possible clashes, like the ones that erupted earlier this year.