A two-cup pot of Darjeeling tea costs Rs 500 at cafes in Kurseong and elsewhere. An eight-hour-long grinding shift at tea gardens earns the workers Rs 230 as daily wage.
Revenue loss from export crops like tea played a big part in Sri Lanka's rapid economic decline. For descendants of Tamil-bonded labourers, life is more difficult now.
Adding up to 17% of Assam’s population and 35% of its electorate, the tea tribes will be critical to the outcomes in about 40 out of 47 constituencies that go to vote Saturday.
There are 30-lakh tea garden workers in Assam, but they continue to be on the margins even though Assam’s Republic Day tableau called them the state’s ‘backbone’.
I was in Islamabad when Mark Tully broke the news of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto being hanged. I held it against him—he could have tipped me off. But he was a journalist before he was a friend.
Premier David Eby, the leader of the minerals- and gas-rich province of British Columbia, spoke with executives at Tata Steel and Reliance Industries on a trade mission to India.
President Murmu has also conferred Kirti Chakra on Major Arshdeep Singh of 1 Assam Rifles for eliminating armed cadres when patrol led by him came under fire along Indo-Myanmar Border last May.
No nation other than China can negotiate one-on-one with Trump on an equal footing. That’s why the middle powers who so far formed the core of multilateral bodies now feel orphaned.
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