Darjeeling's decade: Hope and despair

VIVEK CHHETRI, TT, 02 Jan 2020, Darjeeling: On Day One of the new decade the discourse in Darjeeling revolved around the uncanny similarities between the first day of 2010 and the first day of 2020, with broad consensus emerging that the core issues of identity and land remained unresolved.

While some called it the "lost decade", others said a lot of development did take place.

Locals, observers and opinion makers in the hills spotted the following similarities: 

• In 2010, the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council was being administered by a state-appointed administrator; in 2020, the DGHC has been replaced by the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration which too is administered by a state-appointed board.

• There was no elected rural body in 2010; the situation exists a decade later.
• The demand for granting tribal status to all Gorkha communities has not yet been fulfilled in a decade.
• In 2010 Subash Ghisingh, the former head of the DGHC, was forced to stay outside the hills; in 2020, Bimal Gurung, the former chief of the GTA, is on the run.
• The Darjeeling constituency was represented by a BJP MP in 2010; the same party represents the constituency in 2020.

The Telegraph spoke to a cross section on the hits and misses of the last decade.

Ajoy Edwards, the president of the GNLF's Darjeeling branch committee, said: "It is a lost decade for our people, in a lot of ways we in fact went backwards. Over the decade the GNLF, a dominant force in the hills since 1986, lost popular support.

Many who agreed with Edwards mentioned incidents like the gruesome murder of Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League leader Madan Tamang in May 2010, two rounds of statehood agitations in 2013 and 2017 accounting for nearly 140-odd days of shutdown and the death of 17 people and the incarceration of hundreds.

Those opposed to this line of thought did, however, agree on some of the core issues.

"It is true that the core issues of Darjeeling like identity and land have not be resolved but there were improvements on other fronts. The roads are better, the GTA did receive special funding to the tune of Rs 200 crore for three years and model schools were set up. New colleges have come up and a university and a Presidency College campus are coming up," said a local, who preferred not to be named.

"Electrification of the hills saw a marked improvement," the local added.

The local also pointed out that the creation of a separate district of Kalimpong has benefited the people of that region. Among the gains, some people referred to the growing number of voices against disruptive political activities.

"The hill people are slowly moving out of the culture of bandhs and violence, and tourism is flourishing and homestays are mushrooming," said a schoolteacher.

B.P. Bajgain, a spokesman of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (Bimal Tamang) camp, however, said the current situation suggested that the government had failed. "The Gorkhas are still moving ahead with a dream, it is a different thing that we could not achieve our goal in these 10 years. We have not lost but the governments, whether at the Centre or in the state, have lost. Bajgain's contention was that in the last 10 years it has been clear that the government's decision to come up with an administrative set-up for Darjeeling has not worked. "It is clear that the people were neither happy with the DGHC nor with the GTA," said Bajgpain.

Harka Bahadur Chhetri, the president of the Jana Andolan Party who was earlier with the Morcha, however, believes "nothing has moved in the last decade".

"One is bound to be disappointed if one is to analyse the decade. Politics is a sum total of the activities of people and leaders. Sadly, issues have only become a rallying point during elections. No major issue raised since the time of Ghisingh has been achieved," Chhetri said.

Despite everything, all political leaders are hopeful of a better decade.

"There is hope that a tripartite meeting to solve the Darjeeling problem will help us achieve something beneficial for the hill people," said Edwards..