1986 to 2026: A Common Citizen’s Plea for Darjeeling by Mohan Raj Thakuri explores how common citizens have been impacted due to the repeated Gorkhaland Andolan. Despite repeated deceit by opportunistic politicians, the aspiration continues to burn bright among common citizens.

I was only eight years old in 1986 when the weight of our identity first spilled onto our hill terrain. At that age, you don’t really understand the pulse of power, the politics of Delhi, or the complicated legal language of our country’s Constitution. You just remember how it felt to be a school going child in a home and neighborhood that was constantly on edge. I still remember the sudden curfews (144 Dhara legeko cha) , heavy silence that would fall over our small hamlet known as Ghoompahar, the moment a bandh was announced. I remember the closed school gates, shops , the empty playgrounds, roads , and the quiet, worried conversations my parents had in whispers around the kitchen fire while the tea grew cold.

Most of all, I remember the sound of thousands of footsteps marching through the thick  mist past our window. It was a rhythmic, unfamiliar thundering sound that shook the wooden floors of our old houses and embedded itself deep into my childhood memories .

Growing up in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong , Mirik or the hills means inheriting a dream that is much older than you are. It’s a beautiful but heavy legacy to carry. I am not a politician, and I don’t claim to be an expert or some highly educated scholar who debates our community’s future on television. I am just an ordinary, apolitical citizen who deeply loves this place , the soil, the community, and the people. Today, I am writing this because a deep sense of concern, mixed with a fragile ray of hope, inspired me to express out. I am praying for something positive, genuine, and lasting for the place I belong to.

The Power and Aura of a Name

Like many of you, I was scrolling through my phone recently when I came across the news updates capturing a significant moment from the state assembly’s Budget Session. Watching West Bengal Governor R.N. Ravi officially use the phrase “long drawn Gorkhaland issue” during his address stopped me in my tracks.

It hit me like an emotional wave. For decades, the administrative machinery in Kolkata carefully avoided that word. They treated it like a taboo, an illegal utterance. They preferred safe, diluted terms like “the hill problem”, “regional grievances”, or “administrative inconveniences”, as if we were just a minor headache to be dealt with through temporary financial packages. To see the current Newly formed state government under West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari explicitly lay out this issue by its true name from the floor of the Assembly is a massive, historic and welcoming shift. It feels like a quiet validation of the pain, the tears, and the sacrifices our families have made for generations.

But having said that, as ordinary people who have watched the seasons change and promises fade, we have also learned the hard way never to mistake a shift in political vocabulary for an actual shift in our destiny. A speech in a beautiful assembly hall is just air until it is forged into ironclad, unshakeable constitutional steel.

Identity Beyond Boundaries

To every single one of us, the word Gorkhaland is not just a collection of letters, nor is it merely a boundary line drawn on a political map. It is an emotional chord that strikes deep in our chests the moment it is spoken aloud. It connects us instantly across generations, across villages, and across rivers.

Yet, as we stand at this political crossroads, we must also remind ourselves of a much deeper, unshakeable truth that sits quietly beneath all our struggles : We are Gorkha and Proud to be Indian, with or without Gorkhaland.

Our grand history, our rich cultural heritage, our language, and our core identity do not rely solely on the name of a geographical place to exist. We were Gorkhas living in India long before these administrative lines were debated, and we will remain Gorkhas forever. Our worth is inherent; it is written in our blood, our traditions, and our contributions to this nation. But yes, while our identity cannot be erased by any government, we firmly aspire for Gorkhaland because it remains our preferred, definitive choice for a permanent political solution, a constitutional shield to protect and give a secure home to who we already are.

The Sacred Debt

We cannot talk about these aspirations without talking about the people who never made it back home. Our history isn’t just a timeline of political negotiations; it’s a reality paid for by the ultimate sacrifices of our own people. The initial fire of 1986-1988 claimed over twelve hundred brave lives.

These were ordinary citizens , fathers, brothers, mothers, and young students , whose lives were cut short, leaving behind empty chairs around kitchen fires all over the hills. And the spirit of defiance didn’t just disappear with that era. Decades later, the embers flared again. We watched a new generation step into the streets during the agitations of 2007, and most poignantly, during the exhausting 104-day shutdown of 2017. Once again, young boys and girls faced bullets, and blood stained our roads from Hill to Terai and Dooars.

The Sahid Diwas we observe , The Sahid Smarak and monuments scattered across our region are not just concrete structures to be cleaned , offer garland or bouquet on a particular day , once in a year . They are the resting places of an unfulfilled promise. Our martyrs did not lay down their lives for a minor administrative upgrade, a temporary financial package, or a fancy government car for a local leader. They sacrificed their today’s so that our children could inherit a secure, dignified tomorrow. Achieving a definitive, permanent political solution within the framework of the Indian Constitution is the only true tribute we can offer to their memory. Every time our leadership settles for a toothless, compromised arrangement, it dilutes the weight of that collective sacrifice. A lasting, unshakeable constitutional shield is not just a political demand; it is a sacred debt we owe to every single soul that returned to this earth in the name of our identity.

Looking Bluntly at Our Leadership

But if we are going to demand absolute administrative, legislative, and constitutional protections from the central and state governments, we must first have the courage to look at our own shattered leadership. The most tragic part of our history isn’t just how the outside world treated us; it is how easily we have allowed ourselves to be divided from within. Every single time our collective movement reaches a peak, when the entire population stands united as one heartbeat, our leadership seems to fracture. We have watched a heartbreaking cycle where leaders rise on the backs of ordinary citizens’ sacrifices, only to split into different factions, launch new political parties with new acronyms, and point fingers at one another the moment a seat of power, a financial package, or a VIP beacon car is offered.

The outside world finds it incredibly easy to dismiss us because we speak in ten different, conflicting voices. Our leaders must declare a truce on their personal ambitions and political survival tactics. They need to sit together in one room, lock the door, leave their egos and party flags outside, and create a single, unified front. If they cannot find the grace to unite for the sake of the very soil that gave them birth, they have no right to ask for our respect, our votes, or our faith.

The Trap of Hero Worship

We also need to talk about our own responsibility as common citizens. We constantly boast about our high literacy rates, our premier schools, and how educated our society is. But when it comes to local politics, we often park our collective intellect at the door and let raw emotion completely override our common sense. The moment a leader stands on a stage at Chowrasta, taps the microphone, and delivers a fiery, emotionally charged speech, we swallow everything told to us without asking a single practical question. We turn ordinary human beings into untouchable heroes, deifying them until they believe they are above accountability.

This dangerous tendency brings to my mind a profound warning by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. On November 25, 1949, during his final address to the Constituent Assembly right before the Indian Constitution was adopted, he cautioned the nation about the psychology of political devotion. He famously stated:

“Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

For decades in the hills, we have proven his words right. Every time we turn a politician into an untouchable idol, we surrender our own power. We stop being an aware, educated society and turn into a compliant crowd. A truly responsible citizen must start asking the hard, uncomfortable questions. Instead of just clapping and shouting slogans, we should be demanding the fine print. We need to ask our leaders: What is the actual, legal roadmap? Under which article of the Indian Constitution will this permanent solution exist? What are the explicit legislative powers? How will this solution protect the land rights, the pattas, of our tea garden workers and forest dwellers who have poured their sweat and blood into this soil for two centuries without owning a single inch of the land they live on? The day we start questioning our leaders instead of blindly Hero-worshiping them is the day our movement becomes truly powerful.

Blueprints Over Slogans and Columns

A modern political struggle in India cannot be won by emotional street agitations alone. It must be argued, clause by clause, in the halls of Parliament and before constitutional experts with flawless logic, historical data, and legal acumen. This is where our intellectuals – our teachers, professors, retired bureaucrats, researchers, and eminent writers and journalists have historically failed the common man by remaining on the comfortable sidelines of  being a silent critique or columnists.

We desperately need our finest minds to step into the arena. We cannot leave the drafting of our children’s future solely to career politicians who often cannot see past the next election cycle. We need our educated elite to come forward with their in-depth analytics and research-backed credentials. We need them to draft the definitive blueprints of what our aspirations actually look like on paper. They need to design sustainable economic models for our hills, create policies that protect our fragile, landslide-prone Himalayan ecology, and formulate the exact legal frameworks that will ensure whatever structure we receive can never be starved of funds or dissolved by the changing whims of a future cabinet in Kolkata. We must match the beautiful, raw emotion of the common citizen with the cold, precise intellect of a thoroughly prepared society.

A Lasting Justice

The current balanced political alignment offers a rare, historic window of opportunity. But as a community, we must refuse to be bought off with the crumbs of the past. We have lived through the experiments of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council and the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration frail, administrative bodies that served as nothing more than temporary bandages on a deep, historical wound. We do not want another compromise designed to buy temporary peace; we want a constitutional guarantee designed to deliver permanent justice.

The eight-year-old child who watched the hills shut down in a blur of fear and hope is an adult today, writing these words with a heart that refuses to become cynical. We are a generation that is deeply, profoundly tired. We are tired of the instability, the shattered academic calendars, the broken local economies, and the heartbreaking sight of our bright, educated youth being forced to migrate to distant cities like Delhi, Bangalore, or Mumbai or overseas just to find a basic livelihood. We love our home too much to watch it suffer in an endless loop of unfulfilled dreams.

Let us pray that our leaders find the enlightenment to unite, that we as citizens find the awareness to stay responsible, and that our finest intellectual minds guide our path. It is time for the mist rising over the Kanchenjunga to finally clear up, bringing with it the warmth of a dignified, permanent peace…Rest will follow.

The post 1986 to 2026: A Common Citizen’s Plea for Darjeeling appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

Beyond Planting Trees : Restoring Native Forest and Freshwater Ecosystems In Darjeeling Himalaya Dr. Shailendra Dewan of Singell argues why restoring native ecology is important

Every year, World Environment Day reminds us of our collective responsibility towards the environment. Across the globe, tree-planting campaigns have become a symbol of environmental action, helping to raise awareness about conservation and climate change. While these efforts are important, the ecological future of the Darjeeling Himalaya depends on something broader and more enduring: the restoration of native forest and freshwater ecosystems.

The Darjeeling region forms part of the Eastern Himalaya, one of the world’s most significant biodiversity hot-spots. Its forests, rivers, streams, wetlands, and springs support an extraordinary diversity of life while providing essential ecosystem services that sustain local communities. Yet many of these ecosystems have been altered, fragmented, or degraded over time, reducing their ability to support biodiversity and maintain critical ecological functions.

A Landscape Shaped by History

The landscape of Darjeeling that we see today is very different from what existed two centuries ago. Our understanding of the region’s original ecological character comes not only from the remnant native forest patches that still survive across the landscape but also from the accounts of early naturalists and explorers who documented the region’s remarkable biodiversity.

Among the most notable of these was Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, whose Himalayan Journals provide vivid descriptions of the forests, vegetation, and plant diversity of the Eastern Himalaya during the mid-nineteenth century. Together, these historical accounts and the surviving forest remnants offer valuable insights into ecosystems that once extended across much of the region.

In his own word

“At about 1000 feet above Punkabaree, the vegetation is very rich, and appears all the more so from the many turnings of the road, affording glorious prospects of the foreshortened tropical forests. The prevalent timber is gigantic, and scaled by climbing Leguminosae, as Bauhinias and Robinias, which sometimes sheath the trunks, or span the forest with huge cables, joining tree to tree. Their trunks are also clothed with parasitical Orchids, and still more beautifully with Pothos (Scindapsus), Peppers, Gnetum, Vines, Convolvulus, and Bignoniæ. The beauty of the drapery of the Pothos-leaves is pre-eminent, whether for the graceful folds the foliage assumes, or for the liveliness of its colour” -Source The Himalayan Journal by JD Hooker

Prior to the colonial period, large areas of the lower and middle elevations, specifically in Darjeeling were covered by extensive subtropical and temperate broad-leaf forests that formed a continuous ecological network across the hills. During British rule, the landscape underwent a profound transformation as forests were cleared to establish tea plantations, settlements, roads, and other infrastructure. These changes shaped the economic and cultural identity of the region and continue to influence the landscape today. However, they also resulted in the fragmentation and loss of vast tracts of native forest ecosystems.

What remain today are often isolated patches of native vegetation embedded within tea estates, agricultural lands, village forests, and human settlements. Though fragmented, these remnants represent some of the last surviving examples of ecosystems that once dominated the Darjeeling Himalaya.

Why Native Ecosystems Matter

These remaining forests are far more than green spaces. They are complex living systems that support a remarkable diversity of plants, birds, butterflies, mammals, fungi, and microorganisms. Many species depend on these habitats for survival, while ecological interactions among pollinators, seed dispersers, decomposers, and plants maintain the functioning of the ecosystem. Several threatened species like Rufous Necked Hornbill, Himalayan Newt Salamander, Kaiser I Hind Butterflies exist in this region

Native forests also provide essential ecosystem services. They regulate water flows, recharge springs, stabilize mountain slopes, reduce soil erosion, store carbon, and help buffer communities against the impacts of climate change. Many of the remaining forest patches function as ecological corridors, allowing wildlife to move between habitats in an increasingly fragmented landscape.

The springs, streams, wetlands, and rivers associated with these forests are equally important. Together, forests and freshwater ecosystems form the ecological foundation upon which biodiversity, water security, and human well-being depend.

Restoration is More Than Planting Trees

Protecting these remaining ecosystems is essential, but protection alone is no longer sufficient. Many forest patches have become degraded due to habitat fragmentation, invasive species, unsustainable land-use practices, and the cumulative pressures of climate change.

Ecological restoration is often misunderstood as simply planting trees. In reality, restoration is about recovering entire ecosystems and the ecological processes that sustain them. A native forest is much more than a collection of trees. It is a living network of plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, soils, and water systems that interact over time to create resilient and functioning ecosystems.

Restoration therefore involves protecting remnant forests, encouraging natural regeneration, reconnecting fragmented habitats, restoring native vegetation, controlling invasive species, and ensuring that ecological processes such as pollination, seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, and soil formation continue to function.

Importantly, restoration is not about recreating the past exactly as it was. Rather, it is about recovering ecological functions and reconnecting the remnants of native ecosystems that still persist across the landscape. By restoring these ecological connections, we can enhance biodiversity, strengthen water security, and build resilience in a rapidly changing world.

Reconnecting Forests and Freshwaters

The springs, streams, wetlands, and rivers of the Himalaya are ecological lifelines that connect mountains, forests, and communities. For generations, springs have served as primary sources of drinking water for villages and towns, while rivers and streams have supported agriculture, livelihoods, and biodiversity.

Forests and freshwater ecosystems are deeply interconnected. Healthy forests capture rainfall, enhance groundwater recharge, regulate runoff, and maintain the catchments that feed springs and streams. When forests are degraded, freshwater systems often become vulnerable as well.

Protecting spring recharge zones, restoring riparian vegetation along streams, rehabilitating degraded wetlands, and conserving river corridors are therefore integral components of ecosystem restoration. Such actions not only enhance biodiversity but also strengthen water security, reduce erosion and landslide risks, and improve resilience to climate variability.

Restoring freshwater ecosystems is particularly important in mountain regions where communities are increasingly facing seasonal water shortages and changing rainfall patterns. Healthy forests and healthy watersheds together form the foundation of long-term ecological and social resilience.

Restoration and Sustainable Livelihoods

Restoring ecosystems is not only about conservation; it is also about people.

Healthy native forests support a wide range of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) that contribute to rural livelihoods and cultural traditions. Seasonal collection of fiddle-head ferns (ningro), wild mushrooms, bamboo products, wild edible fruits, fodder resources, and medicinal and aromatic plants has long formed an important part of life in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya. These resources provide food, nutrition, traditional medicines, and supplementary income for many households while helping preserve traditional ecological knowledge passed down through generations.

Restoring native forest ecosystems can improve the availability and sustainability of these resources by enhancing habitat quality and supporting native plant diversity. When managed sustainably, these products can contribute to local economies while creating incentives for conservation.

Restoration can also create new opportunities through nature-based tourism. Forest trails, bird-watching routes, butterfly walks, nature interpretation centres, spring tourism, and community-managed ecotourism initiatives can generate income while promoting environmental stewardship. The region’s exceptional biodiversity offers unique opportunities for wildlife observation, photography, environmental education, and citizen science activities that attract visitors from across India and beyond.

As native biodiversity recovers, it can also create opportunities for a new generation of local entrepreneurs. Young people can develop enterprises linked to ecotourism, birdwatching and butterfly guiding, homestays, biodiversity documentation, native plant nurseries, sustainable NTFP value chains, environmental education, and ecosystem restoration services. Such opportunities can diversify rural economies and generate meaningful employment rooted in local landscapes and cultures.

In a region where many young people migrate outside in search of work, nature-based enterprises can offer viable livelihood alternatives closer to home. Ecosystem restoration can therefore help create conditions that encourage some youth to return, invest their skills locally, and build businesses around the region’s unique natural heritage. In this way, restoration becomes not only an investment in biodiversity and water security but also an investment in people, livelihoods, and the future of mountain communities.

Healthy ecosystems also support agriculture through pollination services, improve water availability, reduce disaster risks, enhance climate resilience, and strengthen local economies. In mountain landscapes where people and nature are closely interconnected, ecosystem restoration is an investment in both ecological and economic well-being.

A Shared Responsibility for the Future

The future of conservation in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya will depend not only on what happens within protected areas but also on how we manage the wider landscape where people live, farm, and work. Tea estates, village communities, educational institutions, local governments, civil society organizations, and individual landowners all have important roles to play in restoring ecological connectivity across the region.

As we mark World Environment Day, it is worth remembering that the ultimate goal is not simply to increase tree cover. It is to restore healthy, connected, and resilient ecosystems that can sustain both biodiversity and human well-being.

The forests, springs, streams, and rivers of Darjeeling and Sikkim are part of a shared natural heritage. Protecting and restoring these ecosystems today will help ensure that future generations inherit landscapes that remain rich in biodiversity, secure in water resources, economically vibrant, and resilient in the face of environmental change.

The future of Darjeeling and Sikkim depends not only on conserving the remnants of its natural heritage but also on restoring the ecological connections that once linked forests, springs, streams, and rivers across the landscape. By investing in ecosystem restoration today, we can build landscapes that support biodiversity, strengthen livelihoods, secure water resources, create opportunities for future generations, and sustain both people and nature for years to come

About the author: Dr. Sailendra Dewan is a research associate with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). He is originally from Singell Tea Estate in Kurseong. His research pursuits are centered around macro-ecology, bio-geography, and community ecology of fauna, focusing on insects in mountain ecosystems. He currently involved in establishing a comprehensive and long-term monitoring program for butterflies alongside investigating the effects of climate change and habitat degradation in the Indian Himalayan Region.

The post Beyond Planting Trees: Restoring Native Forest and Freshwater Ecosystems In Darjeeling Himalaya appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

Siliguri District and The Hollowing Out of Darjeeling, author Anjani Sharma Bhujel explains how a proposed new district of Siliguri would formalise forty years of quiet extraction from the hills

The recent proposal to form a separate district of Siliguri, and cut it away from Darjeeling is not a sudden change. It marks the end of a forty-year shift, where resources meant for the hills have quietly moved to the plains. Making Siliguri a new district would lock in this imbalance and break the territorial basis of the Gorkha claim, which is older than Indian Independence. This could happen without any debate in the legislative assembly, or the Parliament.

Leaders from Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik, Kalimpong, Siliguri, and Dooars owe the people a clear public stance. Staying silent is also a choice. Every elected representative from Darjeeling, Kurseong, Mirik, Kalimpong, Siliguri and Dooars owe the people of the hills a clear, public position. Their silence is itself a position.

The proposal on the table

The new district idea has been set in motion with a letter sent by the Matigara-Naxalbari BJP MLA Anandamay Barman to the chief minister. The letter suggests that the entire Siliguri sub-division, Matigara, Naxalbari, Phansidewa and Khoribari blocks, be separated from Darjeeling and joined with the Dabgram-Fulbari areas of Jalpaiguri district, to form a new district called Siliguri.

There is a new government in the state, of which MLA Anandmay Barman is a second time elected leader, and Siliguri MLA Shankar Ghosh and Phansidewa MLA Druga Murmu on the treasury benches, who could push forward with this.

Since, this is just at a proposal state, we still have time to make a strong case against the separation of our historic territorial areas. But for that to happen, the arguments and resistance against any such move must begin now.

The Siliguri district proposal does not arrive in isolation. In the same fortnight in May 2026, the new state government has cleared the transfer of seven national highway stretches from the state PWD to central agencies, with NHAI taking over NH-31, NH-33 and NH-312, and NHIDCL taking over the Sevoke-Coronation Bridge stretch, Siliguri-Darjeeling stretch, the Hasimara-Jaigaon route and the Changrabandha corridor. Five of the seven stretches pass through the Siliguri Corridor itself. NH-10 to Sikkim and NH-110 to Darjeeling, the two highways most directly serving the hills are among those, now under central control.

In parallel, the state has transferred one hundred and twenty acres of land in the Chicken’s Neck to the Border Security Force for India-Bangladesh border fencing. Three substantial restructurings of North Bengal’s administrative geography in three weeks, all under a national-security framing, all moving at a pace that previous state governments had been unable or unwilling to match.

I strongly believe, among all these, the Siliguri district proposal is the most consequential of the three because it changes the civil-administrative authority over land, people, revenue and policing. It is not just the engineering control of road surfaces or the fencing of a border line, yet it is not separate from the other. They constitute a pattern, and the pattern itself merits attention.

The slow shift of power that nobody noticed

It is not impulsive idea to separate Siliguri off from Darjeeling. It’s the official recognition of the process, which has been ongoing, administratively and developmentally, for much of the last forty years. The power in our region has been gradually shifted from the hills to the plains. Institutions and infrastructure have been allocated for the entire district of Darjeeling, was cunningly spent and shifted to a single sub-division, which is now proposed to be a new district.

The institutional drift must be taken into account first. The Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad was set up in 1989 as a sub-divisional council which has district level powers, the only one of its kind in entire India.

In 1994 the Siliguri Municipal Corporation was formed with forty seven wards in two districts, and the Siliguri-Jalpaiguri Development Authority was formed to garner urban-planning powers which were previously held by the Darjeeling district administration.

Siliguri Police Commissionerate was established in 2012, with the jurisdiction of over 640 sq kilometers of Siliguri city and the adjoining sub-urban areas in the plains.

Every single step, seen in isolation seemed in each case to be a legitimate urban-administrative reform. But when seen holistically, it clearly emerges that they were all a part of the major plan, without anyone being aware of it as a part of the one larger project – to separate Siliguri from Darjeeling. The hills weren’t complaining. In most cases the hills did not even know what happened, they were occupied in changing flags and establishing new kings.  

Let’s now look at the developmental drift, which is the more significant half of the story. It was established in 1962 with the aim of catering the needs of the entire region, the University of North Bengal was located in Matigara, in the plains, not in the hills, at Raja Rammohanpur.

In 1968, the Medical College of North Bengal was established to cater to the population of the same region and was located once again in the plains at Sushrutnagar in Matigara. In 1990, North Bengal Dental College was built and now it is housed at Matigara.

Bagdogra airport, in Darjeeling district by virtue of sitting in Naxalbari block, was built and progressively upgraded through grants attributed to district aviation infrastructure, with every new runway extension and terminal expansion booked to the district’s account.

The Industrial Estate of North Bengal was established at Matigara. NH 4 to Sikkim was four laned in Siliguri sub-division. No parts of the Asian Highway corridor, which connects Bhutan/India and Bangladesh is outside the proposed carve-out area as it goes through Bagdogra and Phulbari.

The recently announced underground railway to pass through the Siliguri corridor, which is of national-security importance in the field of defence logistics and is worth several thousand crore rupees, ends at Siliguri sub-division.

On paper, every one of these is “Darjeeling district infrastructure,” paid for out of central and state allocations attributed to a district whose three hill sub-divisions never saw the spending.

This is the main problem with the Siliguri district proposal, and it should be said plainly. For the last forty years, Siliguri’s progress has been counted as “Darjeeling district’s” success. The airport appears in the tourism brochures. University appear in the education ministry reports. The medical college appears in the health budget speeches. The highway appears in the NHAI map books. The hills have been the brand; the plains have been the beneficiary.

The plan-document accounting that allowed central and state allocations to flow into Siliguri infrastructure under the heading of “Darjeeling district development” has been the financial mechanism through which the hills have funded their own marginalization. Money meant for Darjeeling’s development was mostly spent in Siliguri, so the hills ended up paying for their own neglect. 

Technically and legally every rupee spent in Matigara, Naxalbari, Bagdogra was the rupee of the district, it was also the hills’ rupee since the hills were part of the district. None of it returned to the hills. None of the institutions built with it serve the hills directly. None of the highway alignments reach the hills.

When Siliguri is carved out as a separate district, every one of those assets physically leaves with it. They were never retained by the hills in any meaningful administrative sense. They merely appeared in Darjeeling district statistics, in its audited accounts, in its representation to Delhi and Kolkata. After the carve-out, even that fiction ends. That is the total inheritance of forty years of being “Darjeeling district” while Siliguri’s growth was being recorded as the district’s growth.

The hills produce, Siliguri trades

The institutional drift described above has hardened into a single contemporary reality. Darjeeling district today is a producer-region whose produce is monetised, traded, valued and taxed almost entirely in Siliguri.

The best-known example is, of course, the tea of Darjeeling. The premium GI Marked leaf grown in the eighty-seven recognised gardens above 1,000 metres in the areas of Darjeeling-Pulbazar, Kurseong, Mirik, Jorebunglow-Sukhia and Rangli-Rangliot is auctioned in the Siliguri Tea Auction Centre. The centre started in 1976 and is one of the major tea auctions in India, and where a hill kilogram of tea turns into a national or international price. Auctioneer commissions, brokerage fees, warehousing rents and the GST on the sale all accrue to the place of auction.

The growers retain the cost of production and a fraction of the realised price. The value is captured in Siliguri.

The same pattern repeats across every category of hill produce. The Siliguri Regulated Market, or mandi of Siliguri is one of the biggest wholesale markets for agriculture products from the hills and Terai to the plains, to the rest of India and the trans-shipment routes to Bhutan, Bangladesh and the North East.

In Bidhan Market, wholesale fruit and vegetables, oranges from Sittong, Mirik, cardamom from higher slopes and ginger from Kurseong-Pulbazar are sold. Siliguri is the entry point for every single source of income from a hill harvest that is recorded as a national number, ranging from mandi cess to market-yard fees, weighbridge charges, the margin of the commission agents, cold-chain rents and export-pipeline tariffs via the Phulbari Land Customs Station.

Add to this the Tea Board of India’s Siliguri Regional Office at the Sahid Bhagat Singh Commercial Complex on Sevoke Road, the head offices of every major tea broker and exporter, the agricultural marketing committee, the GST registration desks for tea and horticulture traders, the cold-chain certification authorities, the spice and cardamom grading laboratories.

All of them sit in Siliguri. All of them administer the conversion of hill output into recorded national value.

That last fact deserves a pause. The Tea Board of India is the statutory regulator for the most famous mountain tea in the world. It could have placed its regional office at Darjeeling town, the global brand name stamped on every premium tin shipped to London, Tokyo and Berlin. It chose Sevoke Road, Siliguri.

The world’s most famous hill tea is regulated from the plains, and the arrangement is so old that no one any longer finds it strange. The hills grow and produce. Siliguri trades and earns. The transfer is administered today under the legal fiction that both belong to the same district. After the carve-out, that legal fiction disappears.

The hills become a producer-region for a trading hub that is no longer even nominally their own. The economic asymmetry that has existed for decades becomes formal, administrative and structural, written into the district map.

A grower in Mirik will continue to bring oranges to the Regulated Market at Siliguri, but the market fee, the licence, the storage rent and the export tariff will enter the books of a different district. A tea garden in Jorebunglow will continue to send its first-flush kilograms to the Siliguri auction centre, but the auction commission, the brokerage and the GST on the sale will all be recorded as Siliguri district revenue, not Darjeeling’s. The arrangement as it exists today is extractive in economic terms but at least notionally unified administratively.

The proposed arrangement is extractive in economic terms and formally separated administratively. There is a name for that pattern. It is the relationship a colonial power maintains with a producing hinterland whose trade it controls, but whose autonomy it does not concede.

What physically walks out of Darjeeling district

A district is not a sentiment. It is a balance sheet. Remove the Siliguri sub-division out of Darjeeling and the following physically leaves: Bagdogra International Airport, the only commercial airport serving Sikkim, Bhutan and the eastern Himalayas; the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital at Sushrutnagar in Matigara, the only tertiary referral hospital for hill residents, tea-garden workers and the working poor across three districts; the University of North Bengal at Raja Rammohunpur, the only state university for the region; the North Bengal Dental College; the entire industrial belt that runs from Matigara through Bagdogra to Naxalbari; the Mechi land border crossing at Panitanki, which is the only commercial road border with eastern Nepal in this part of India; and every single kilometre of district’s international border with Bangladesh, which runs through Phansidewa and Kharibari blocks.

Let me remind you again these are not just places or landmarks they are sources of income, trade and revenue of the Darjeeling district.

What Darjeeling district retains after the carve-out is five hill blocks: Darjeeling-Pulbazar, Jorebunglow-Sukhiapokhri, Rangli-Rangliot, Kurseong and Mirik. It retains the district headquarters at Darjeeling town, the three hill municipalities, the UNESCO World Heritage Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the premium GI-marked Darjeeling tea gardens, and a stretch of hill border with Nepal and the interstate border with Sikkim, none of which carry commercial crossings of any consequence.

The district would have no airport. No university. No medical college. No international border with Bangladesh. No revenue base of any substance beyond cyclical tea and seasonal tourism. The district’s population, currently around eighteen lakh after the 2017 Kalimpong bifurcation, would fall to roughly seven or eight lakh, making it the least populous district in West Bengal, smaller than every other district in North Bengal, and administered from a district headquarters whose own town has a population of just over a lakh.

It would not be a district in any meaningful administrative sense. It would be a museum with a DM’s office.

The people who pay the price first

The arithmetic of district reorganisation hides behind the language of administrative efficiency, but its weight falls on people who do not write newspaper columns.

A tea worker from a Mirik garden referred for emergency cardiac care travels today to NBMCH at Matigara. After the carve-out, that hospital sits in a different district. The administrative machinery of inter-district referrals, ambulance transport tie-ups, welfare-payment routing and labour-board adjudication, running poorly enough when one DM signs both ends of a file, degrades further when two DMs are involved. The patient does not experience this as paperwork. The patient experiences it as a delay.

A student from Kurseong or Kalimpong attending the University of North Bengal sits for examinations governed by a new Siliguri DM and a Siliguri Police Commissionerate that have no political stake in the hills.

Hostel disputes, identity verification, scholarship disbursements all route through an administration whose constituency lies elsewhere.

None of this is theoretical. The 2017 Gorkhaland bandh demonstrated, with brutal clarity, what happens when the plains and the hills fall out of administrative or political sync. There was an estimated daily loss of Rs 2 crore for Siliguri businesses, hill establishments unable to receive supplies, tea consignments stranded at NJP. The Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of North Bengal estimated then that some 75 per cent of Siliguri’s commerce depended on the Sikkim-Darjeeling axis. The plains-hills relationship is functional infrastructure. The proposal treats it as a wall.

The Gorkhaland question, and why this is the heart of the matter

Here is the part that has not been said loudly enough, and which transforms this from an administrative debate into a constitutional one.

The Gorkhaland demand, as articulated continuously since the Hillmen’s Association petition of 1907, through the All India Gorkha League’s formation in 1943, through Subash Ghisingh’s GNLF in 1980 and Bimal Gurung’s GJM thereafter, has never been a demand for the three hill subdivisions alone. It has been, from the very first petition, a demand for the contiguous Nepali-speaking territory of North Bengal, comprising the hills, the Terai and the Nepali-majority pockets of the Dooars.

Every map of proposed Gorkhaland, in every iteration of the movement, has included substantial parts of Siliguri sub-division and large tracts of what is today Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts.

This is not an academic point. The Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Act of 2011, which the present West Bengal chief minister herself signed into law, explicitly placed eighteen mouzas of Siliguri sub-division within GTA jurisdiction. Those mouzas lie in Naxalbari and Matigara, the very blocks Barman’s letter now proposes to detach.

The Centre’s Permanent Political Solution process for the Gorkhaland question, on which former BSF Director-General Pankaj Kumar Singh was appointed interlocutor in 2024, is premised on assessing exactly which Terai and Dooars areas should be folded into any future autonomy or statehood arrangement.

A separate Siliguri district pre-empts that process.

Once Naxalbari, Matigara, Phansidewa, Kharibari and the Dabgram-Fulbari belt are constituted as a single administrative unit headquartered in Siliguri city, with its own DM, its own SP, its own bureaucratic identity, its own assembly representation that focuses around plains demographics, its own development authority and its own revenue lines, bringing any of these areas back into a future Gorkhaland becomes politically and administratively far harder.

A district once created in India is almost never uncreated. The carve-out is, in plain language, a quiet pre-settlement of the territorial component of the Gorkhaland question, done without consultation with hill parties, without Parliament, without a referendum, and without the political-solution framework the Government of India has nominally committed to.

The people advocating the proposal know this. The MLAs proposing it represent Matigara-Naxalbari and Siliguri, the very constituencies whose Gorkha and Adivasi voters would, in any honest accounting, have a stake in whether their mouzas join a future Gorkhaland or stay in a Bengal-administered Siliguri district. The proposal asks them to make that decision now, in 2026, without admitting it is being made.

The Terai is not a foreign appendage attached to the hills; it is part of the same human geography. Phansidewa and Bagdogra have substantial Nepali-speaking populations whose families have lived there for  generations, and the tea-garden workforce of the Terai is overwhelmingly Adivasi and Gorkha. Their political voice in district affairs has always run through hill institutions, hill parties and hill networks. Cutting off these blocks administratively is not a neutral change. It is a demographic rearrangement of political power.

Table 2: Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste populations in the affected blocks (Census 2011).

Limb by limb: the geography of a vanishing homeland

The Gorkhaland demand at its origin was for a contiguous territory of roughly thirteen thousand square kilometres covering the hills, the Terai and the Nepali-majority Dooars. Look at a map of that territory today and trace what has been taken from it, one administrative decision at a time.

The Dooars came off first. The Nepali-majority blocks of Banarhat, Birpara, Madarihat, Kalchini and Kumargram, with their tea-garden populations of Gorkha and Adivasi workers, were quietly removed from administrative consideration when Subash Ghisingh accepted the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council in 1988.

The DGHC covered only the hills. The Dooars demand was deferred, with assurances that it would be addressed in a fuller settlement. It never was. Forty years later, those blocks remain in Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts, administered by DMs who have no political stake in the Gorkha question.

An entire wing of the original homeland was traded for a hill council, and the hill leadership of the day accepted that trade.

The next reduction came with the 2011 GTA Act, when Bimal Gurung signed an agreement that covered the hills plus eighteen mouzas of Siliguri sub-division. Eighteen mouzas out of an originally claimed territory containing many more.

The rest of the Terai was again deferred. The political logic was familiar. A bigger council than the DGHC, more powers, more positions, more patronage. In exchange, a smaller territory than originally claimed. The Gorkha leadership of the day accepted that trade too.

Now the proposed Siliguri district takes those eighteen mouzas off the table altogether. After the carve-out, the Terai is no longer even nominally within reach of any future Gorkhaland settlement. What began as a claim to roughly thirteen thousand square kilometres of hills, Terai and Dooars is being reduced, by successive administrative decisions made over forty years, to roughly two thousand square kilometres of hills alone.

Each reduction was accepted by the hill leadership of the time on the same logic: the offer of a kingdom, however small, in exchange for the surrender of a claim, however historic.

It is worth saying this plainly, because no one in the hill leadership has been willing to. The geographical fragmentation of the Gorkha homeland has not happened only because successive state governments wanted it. It has happened because successive generations of hill leaders preferred the certainty of a position over the uncertainty of a principle.

Ghisingh chose the DGHC chairmanship over continuing the Gorkhaland agitation in its full territorial form. Gurung chose the GTA chief executive’s office over insisting on the full territorial scope of the original demand. Anit Thapa today runs a GTA whose boundaries were drawn by an agreement his predecessor signed and whose territorial claim he has not publicly insisted upon since taking office. Each generation of leadership has accepted a smaller body with greater personal authority in place of a larger claim with greater collective meaning. The Gorkhaland map has shrunk in exact proportion to the careers built on its diminution.

The Siliguri district proposal asks the current generation of hill leadership to make the same trade one more time. To accept the carve-out, quietly, in exchange for the continued running of a hill council whose territory shrinks every decade. If they accept it, the next reduction is not difficult to imagine. A future state government, looking at a Darjeeling district reduced to five hill blocks and seven lakh people, will note that the hills could be reorganised more efficiently still. There will be proposals to merge sub-divisions. To rationalise municipal boundaries. To absorb the GTA into a more compact administrative unit. Each of these will be presented as a small adjustment. Each will be accepted, if past is prologue, in exchange for some new sinecure.

The hill leadership must understand that there is no point at which this process stops by itself. It stops when the leadership refuses to trade territory for position. The Siliguri carve-out is the place to refuse. After it, there is not much left to refuse over.

Figure 3: The Gorkhaland territorial claim, compressed  across four decades.

The habit of protesting too late

There is a second pattern, related to the first, that the hills must break if any of the above arguments are to matter. It is the habit of reacting to decisions only after they have been finalised.

The history of the Gorkhaland movement, viewed honestly, is a history of bandhs called too late. The agitation of 1986 to 1988 came after decades of administrative decisions had already settled the status quo. The bandh of 2007 came after the DGHC’s territorial limits had been accepted for nineteen years. The bandh of 2013 came after the GTA Act of 2011 had already codified the eighteen-mouza compromise. The hundred-and-four-day bandh of 2017 came after the GTA was already a functioning institution running on the very terms the bandh purported to reject.

Each agitation was a protest against a decision the hill leadership had failed to oppose at the moment it was being made. Each ended in an exhausted negotiation that delivered less than the bandh had demanded.

This is not a coincidence of personalities. It is a structural failing of how hill politics has organised itself. The Gorkha public discourse mobilises around symbols and grievances after the administrative substance has been settled, rather than engaging with the administrative substance before it hardens. Decisions are taken in cabinet rooms in Kolkata and Delhi while hill leaders are touring constituencies.

By the time the gazette notification arrives, the political space for opposition has already collapsed into the narrow choice between a destructive bandh and a humiliating acceptance.

The proposed Siliguri district is, at this moment, still a proposal. It is a 2025 letter from a BJP MLA to a chief minister, picked up by a 2026 state government that may yet be persuaded to slow down. It has not been gazetted. It has not been notified. The asset-transfer arithmetic has not been published. The consultation with the GTA has not happened. The political risk assessment for the Gorkhaland and Kamtapur questions has not been written, let alone debated. This is the window in which proactive opposition can actually shape the outcome. After gazette notification, the only response left will be a bandh, by which time the carve-out will be administratively irreversible and a thousand crores of business will have been lost in the hills and the plains for a result that was decided months earlier.

The hills must learn, before another decade of reactive politics passes, that statehood is built in the years before the decision and not in the weeks after it. Memorandums must be filed now, while the proposal is still a letter. Legal opinions must be sought now, while the cabinet has not yet considered it. Cross-party hill meetings must be convened now, while the issue is still amenable to compromise.

The tea industry, the chambers of commerce, the university faculty, the GTA, the church and monastery networks must be persuaded to take public positions now, while their positions can still influence the drafting of the proposal. Memoranda submitted after gazette notification end up in archive folders. Memoranda submitted before it end up in cabinet briefing notes.

This requires a different kind of politics than the hill leadership has practised for forty years. It requires patience. It requires research. It requires the willingness to engage with state-government file numbers and central-government interlocutor schedules rather than with the more emotionally satisfying language of grievance.

It is, in short, the politics of foresight rather than the politics of reaction. The Gorkhaland movement, if it is to mean anything at this stage of its history, must learn to fight for its territory at the moment the territory is being redrawn, not in the months after the new map has been printed.

Table 3: Major Gorkhaland bandhs and the decisions they were reacting to.

Why every hill politician must speak, and what their silence so far reveals

This is what makes the silence of the hill leadership the single most disturbing feature of the present moment.

Anit Thapa’s Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha, which controls the GTA, has issued no public position on the Siliguri district proposal. Yet the GTA’s territorial coherence depends precisely on those eighteen Siliguri sub-division mouzas remaining within reach of any future settlement. BGPM lost the Darjeeling assembly seat to BJP’s Noman Rai in 2026. It cannot afford a second strategic loss by default.

Bimal Gurung’s Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, the original architect of the post-Ghisingh phase of the Gorkhaland movement, has been quiet. Mann Ghisingh’s Gorkha National Liberation Front, the formal custodian of the founding demand, has been quiet. Ajoy Edwards’ Hamro Party and the Indian Gorkha Janshakti Front, which built their political identity on a critique of the older parties’ inertia, have been quiet.

The two BJP MLAs who proposed this, Anandamay Barman and Shankar Ghosh, owe their constituents an explanation of how a separate Siliguri district is compatible with the Permanent Political Solution that their own party’s MP from Darjeeling, Raju Bista, has been demanding since 2019.

Bista himself has so far avoided the question. He cannot keep doing so. The Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency covers every assembly seat at stake. If its MP cannot articulate a position on whether these blocks belong administratively to the hills or to the plains, the seat itself has stopped speaking for its people.

The tea industry has stayed out of the conversation. So have the chambers of commerce, the hoteliers, the transport associations, the university faculty, the church and monastery networks. Each of them stands to be directly affected. Each of them has, until now, treated this as a debate for politicians. It is not. It is a debate about which DM signs which licence, which sub-divisional officer routes which welfare scheme, which Commissionerate registers which company.

Silence will not protect them from the consequences. It will only make them irrelevant to a decision being taken about them.

The right way to do this, if it must be done

We are not blind to the problems of Siliguri. None of this is an argument that Siliguri’s current governance arrangements are adequate. They are not. Siliguri’s urban agglomeration of more than twelve lakh people, expanding to roughly eighteen lakh across the wider area proposed for the new district, cannot reasonably be administered from a hill district headquarters more than seventy kilometres away.

The Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad model has run out of administrative road, and there is a legitimate case for stronger local governance for the Siliguri urban area, but the legitimate response to that problem is not a unilateral district carve-out.

It is, at minimum, three things. First, a public feasibility study covering revenue impact on Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, the asset-transfer arithmetic, and a formal political risk assessment for the Gorkhaland and Kamtapur questions, published in full, not whispered between cabinet secretaries.

Second, a formal consultation with the GTA, with hill parties of every persuasion, with Adivasi and Rajbanshi community organisations whose ancestral territories are also at stake, and with the Centre’s Permanent Political Solution interlocutor.

Third, an explicit written commitment, gazetted, not merely promised, that the creation of any Siliguri district does not foreclose the territorial scope of the Gorkhaland settlement currently under negotiation and Siliguri if a district made will be a part of the state created.

If those three things cannot be done, the proposal should not proceed. If they can be done, the hills will have a fair say. Either way, the present trajectory of a 2025 MLA’s letter, a sympathetic 2026 government, no public study, no consultation and no commitment, is unacceptable.

First restore, then separate

If, despite all of the arguments above, the new state government is determined to proceed with a separate Siliguri district, there is one further principle that must be conceded before any line is drawn. It is a principle that gives the carve-out, at minimum, the moral cover of fairness rather than the appearance of theft.

It is this. For forty years, institutions and infrastructure built in the name of Darjeeling district have been physically placed in Siliguri, paid for out of allocations attributed to a district whose hill sub-divisions saw none of the actual investment. The University of North Bengal, the North Bengal Medical College, the North Bengal Dental College, the Tea Board’s Siliguri Regional Office, the Siliguri Tea Auction Centre, the Regulated Market for hill produce, the airport runway upgrades, the AH-grade highway alignments, the upgraded NH 10 to Sikkim. Every one of them was funded as Darjeeling district development. Every one of them serves the hills nominally. Very few of them serve the hills in practice. The hills have been the financial guarantor and the brand-name of a development pattern that has benefited the plains.

If Siliguri is now to be carved out as a separate district, those accumulated investments cannot simply walk out unaccompanied. The principle that must be established, in writing, in cabinet resolution, gazetted before any district notification, is that separation requires restitution.

What was built in the hills’ name must, before the line is drawn, either be relocated to serve the hills, or be financially settled in their favour, or be placed under joint administrative arrangements that guarantee hill access and a hill revenue-share.

In concrete terms, that means at least four things. First, a one-time capital settlement transferred from the new Siliguri district to the residual Darjeeling district, calculated on the audited share of central and state allocations attributed to Darjeeling district that were physically spent in Siliguri sub-division over the last twenty years.

Second, a commitment to build hill-located satellites of the major institutions. These would include a North Bengal University campus in Kurseong or Darjeeling, a tertiary referral hospital in the hills with referral parity to NBMCH, a tea auction sub-centre with priority handling for GI-marked Darjeeling tea, and a fully operational airstrip in the hills with state subsidy on essential connectivity routes.

Third, ongoing revenue-share arrangements on the trade of Darjeeling-branded produce, since the “Darjeeling” name remains owned by the hills regardless of which district handles the auction.

Fourth, joint administrative arrangements over the Siliguri Tea Auction Centre, the Tea Board Siliguri Regional Office and the Siliguri Regulated Market, with formal hill representation on their governing bodies.

These are not radical demands. They are the minimum that any honest district reorganisation in India should provide, and they have in fact been provided elsewhere.

When Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the financial settlement between the two states ran into thousands of crores and inter-state asset-sharing arrangements continue to this day. When Uttarakhand was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, large parts of the legacy administrative apparatus were either physically relocated to Dehradun or settled in the new state’s favour. The Kalimpong carve-out of 2017, by contrast, transferred few accumulated assets because Kalimpong had few. The Alipurduar carve-out of 2014 was geographically clean.

Siliguri’s case is qualitatively different from both. It would take with it the single largest concentration of accumulated public investment in any West Bengal district bifurcation since the state was constituted. That makes the restitution principle non-negotiable.

The proposal currently on the table makes no such provision. It assumes, silently, that the hills will accept the carve-out and the asset transfer as a fait accompli. It assumes they have already conceded their claim to forty years of investment recorded in their name. The hills must insist on the opposite principle. Nothing leaves without an honest accounting. First restore, then separate. If the new state government refuses, the answer is straightforward. The carve-out cannot proceed.

A decision being made in your name

The people of Darjeeling district, in both the hills and the plains, are about to have a decision made about them without being asked. They will lose their airport, their medical college, their university, their international borders and the better part of their economic base. They will, in addition, lose the territorial integrity of a Gorkha claim that pre-dates Indian Independence itself, not by argument, not by referendum, not by parliamentary debate, but by an administrative notification quietly tabled at a state cabinet meeting and signed into effect.

This is the moment for the hill leadership to speak. The list of those who must speak includes BGPM, GJM, GNLF, Hamro Party, the BJP MP, the BJP MLAs who proposed it, the tea industry, the hoteliers, the academics, the church and monastery networks, and the civil society of Darjeeling town, Kurseong, Kalimpong and Mirik. Not in private channels. Not after the fact. In public, in print, in the Assembly, in the Lok Sabha, in the streets if necessary.

The case against this proposal can be made on revenue grounds, on connectivity grounds, on people’s welfare grounds, on Gorkhaland-question grounds. Any one of those would be sufficient. Taken together, they are overwhelming.

The hills have been told for forty years that their demands are too inconvenient, too divisive, too premature, too late. They have been asked to wait. While they have waited, the plains beneath them have been administered, developed, contested and, now, prepared to be detached.

The proposal to carve Siliguri out of Darjeeling is not a routine administrative reform. It is the most consequential territorial decision affecting the Gorkha people since the GTA Act of 2011, and it is being taken at a faster pace, with less consultation and with fewer legal safeguards.

If the hill leadership cannot find its voice now, when an airport, a university, a medical college, an international border and the territorial heart of its political identity are walking out of the district in a single move, it will not find that voice later. The carve-out, once gazetted, is unlikely to be reversed. The political claim, once fragmented, will be far harder to reassemble.

Speak now. Or accept that what comes next was decided in your silence.

Writes: Anjani Sharma Bhujel

The post Siliguri District and The Hollowing Out of Darjeeling – Beware appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

My son passed his 10th boards.

Not with the kind of marks that make society erupt into performative applause, but with enough to preserve something infinitely more valuable — his confidence, his dignity, and his belief in himself.

And I keep thinking: What if he hadn’t?

Would a few failed papers have suddenly transformed him into a lesser human being? Less intelligent? Less worthy of love, respect, or a future? What a brutal system — one that convinces children their value can be quantified before they have even discovered who they are.

For months, children are stripped of sleep, joy, and peace in the name of “success.” Homes become factories of anxiety. Parents call it discipline; often, it is fear masquerading as ambition.

An exam can measure memory and performance under pressure. It cannot measure character, resilience, compassion, creativity, emotional depth, or the ability to build a meaningful life.

The world is filled with highly accomplished people who are emotionally bankrupt, and equally filled with ordinary students who became extraordinary human beings. So no, I refuse to believe a marksheet determines destiny. Because long after the percentages are forgotten, a child remembers one thing: whether they were loved as a human being or evaluated as a project. And no academic achievement is worth the slow destruction of a child’s spirit.

My best friend wrote this on her social media page after the ICSE Class X results were declared on Thursday, and it stayed with me long after I finished reading. It wasn’t just moving. It was unsettling in the way truth often is. The kind that lingers quietly, refusing to be brushed aside.

As a mother of a child preparing for her Boards next year, I find myself standing at that familiar crossroads of hope and fear. There is the quiet hope that your child will do well, of course, but alongside it runs a steady current of anxiety, tension, and that ever-present “mummy worry” that never quite switches off. It sits with you at your workplace, your home, follows you into thoughts and conversations, and lingers even in moments that are meant to feel light.

Because Board exams in our country are not just academic milestones anymore. They slowly turn into emotional battlegrounds. Not only for children, but for entire families who begin to measure time, mood, and even self-worth around a set of dates on a calendar.

It often feels like walking a tightrope without a safety net. On one side is encouragement, on the other is pressure – and we are constantly trying to strike a balance without even knowing if we are getting it right. And all around us is noise. A relentless, almost celebratory obsession with “top scorers” flooding social media, newspapers, and television screens. Percentages flash like badges of honour. Toppers are interviewed, analysed, glorified. Success is loudly defined, repeatedly reinforced, and narrowly measured.

But in all this noise, there is a silence that feels almost deliberate.

What about those who didn’t top the charts? Those who fell short of expectations—others’ or their own? What about the average student, the one who tried quietly, consistently, but couldn’t translate effort into numbers? When did effort stop being enough?

And beyond them—what about their parents and guardians, who are navigating their own quiet storms of worry, disappointment, guilt, and helplessness? The ones who replay conversations in their heads, wondering if they pushed too hard—or not enough. The ones who must choose their words carefully, because even a casual remark can either steady a child or shatter what little confidence remains.

What about the friends who don’t know whether to celebrate or console? The classrooms that will reopen with invisible lines drawn between “successful” and “not quite there”? The homes where conversations will either grow softer or heavier?

And most importantly, what about these children themselves…standing at a fragile intersection of self-worth and societal validation, trying to make sense of where they stand in a world that seems to reduce them to a number?

Perhaps the real question we need to ask ourselves is this: when did marks become a measure of a child’s worth, rather than just a reflection of a moment in time?

Because long after the percentages fade and the headlines move on, what remains is far more lasting—the confidence we build, or the doubt we quietly plant.

These are the voices we rarely hear.
And maybe, these are the ones we need to listen to the most.

(Sarikah Atreya is a senior journalist and media personality from Sikkim)

The post Numbers, Noise, and the Quiet Truth appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

Trapped in the Feed by Raunak Mukherjee explores the “doomscrolling” pheonomenon and how social-media algorithms are designed to keep you engaged

At 2 a. m. in a hostel room , a 22-year-old media student scrolls through Instagram Reels rather than study for his exam. The videos merge together; fitness influencers flaunting sculpted bodies, productivity gurus advocating “hustle culture,” and travel vloggers living lives very different from his. “I don’t even recall launching the app,” he remarked. “I simply wanted to respond to a message. “Two hours vanished. “

The student’s story is not unique. Across India, college students and young content producers find themselves caught in an infinite loop of swipes, likes, and comparisons. This phenomenon is driven by a strong but mostly invisible force: algorithmic curation, which determines what appears on our screens and what disappears silently.

As social media networks become vital to how young Indians communicate, study, and express themselves, researchers and mental health specialists are posing an important question: What does this continuous algorithmic filtering do to young minds?

The Science Behind the Scroll

Social media algorithms are basically recommendation engines. Platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook utilize data such as watch time, likes, comments, shares, and even pauses while scrolling to forecast which material will keep consumers interested the longest.

According to Meta’s openly published study on Instagram, content that promotes consistent engagement, notably emotional responses, is prioritised in users’ feeds. This implies that posts that elicit joy, envy, indignation, or aspiration are more likely to spread than neutral or informative content.

“The algorithm does not think in terms of well-being; it thinks in terms of engagement,” says Dr. Shubhangi Parkar, a psychiatrist and former director of mental health services at KEM Hospital in Mumbai. “And human psychology is especially susceptible to emotional ups and downs. “

Neuroscience research has discovered that unpredictable rewards, such as viral videos or sudden likes, increase dopamine release in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is linked to pleasure and motivation. This can lead to dopamine loops, in which people scroll continuously in anticipation of the next gratifying update.

Comparison Culture in the Age of Algorithms

Algorithm-based feeds may accentuate social comparison for Indian university students trying to negotiate identity, ambition, and relationships.

According to a 2023 research published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, there is a significant link between heavy social media use and higher rates of anxiety, low self-esteem, and body dissatisfaction among urban youngsters. The impact was especially noticeable among young women and would-be influencers.

Algorithms exacerbate this comparison culture by constantly presenting users with content that is similar to what they already engage with, resulting in echo chambers of aspiration and inadequacy.

The psychological health costs of anxiety, burnout, and silence are significant.

While social media has fostered connection and creativity, the mental health implications are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Meta’s own internal research, some of which was presented during US congressional hearings, admitted that Instagram might aggravate body image concerns in adolescent females. Mental health specialists in India describe comparable trends.

“We notice kids who have anxiety stemming from internet validation,” says Dr. Samir Parikh, Director of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences at Fortis Healthcare. “Likes and views become measures of self-worth. “

The pressure extends beyond the users. Content makers experience algorithmic uncertainty, never fully understanding why a post succeeds or fails. This lack of openness can cause burnout, sleep difficulties, and chronic stress.

“Creators are working for an unseen employer,” Dr. Parikh explains. “And that manager keeps changing the rules. “

Local context: Why young Indians are especially vulnerable.

India’s young population, over 65% are under the age of 35, together with inexpensive data and smartphone connectivity makes algorithm-driven platforms extremely powerful.

For many students in small towns, social media exposes them to worldwide cultures and possibilities. While inspiring, this exposure can also exacerbate feelings of inadequacy when personal circumstances do not align with algorithmic ideals.

According to sociologist Dr. Shilpa Phadke, “platforms frequently amplify dominant beauty standards, urban privilege, and consumer success. ” Marginalized voices find it difficult to compete unless they match algorithm choices. “

Can Technology Be Accountable as Well?

In response to increasing criticism, platforms have implemented tools such as “Take a Break” reminders, hidden like counts, and content warnings. However, professionals believe that these methods place responsibility on individuals rather than systems.

“Digital literacy must include algorithmic literacy,” according to Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy, a Media Studies professor at IIIT-Bangalore. “Young people need to realize that what they see is curated, not unbiased reality. “

Some Indian institutions have started including digital well-being workshops into orientation programs, instructing students how to regulate screen time and critically assess internet information.

Towards Healthier Feeds.

As awareness grows, younger users are also fighting back. Many students report curating their own feeds by unfollowing stressful accounts, establishing screen-time restrictions, and seeking offline support.

“I still use Instagram,” Ayaan confesses, “but I mute accounts that make me feel awful about myself. It’s not ideal, but it helps. “

Experts emphasize that real change necessitates collaboration among tech companies, lawmakers, educators, and consumers.

“Algorithms influence behavior, but they are designed by humans,” Dr. Parkar points out. “Ethical design is no longer optional; it’s a public health concern. “

Conclusion: reclaiming agency in the feed.

Algorithms for social networking are not intrinsically harmful. They can link people, promote voices, and disseminate information. However, when participation becomes the sole measure of success, mental health hazards rise, particularly for young Indians negotiating important years.

Understanding how algorithms function is the first step toward gaining control. As consumers learn to question their feeds and demand accountability from platforms, the scroll may finally become a choice rather than a trap.

Writes: Raunak Mukherjee. He is a compelting his B A in Media and Journalism from Christ University, Bengaluru.

Sources and attribution.

• Meta (Instagram). Research Reports on Youth Engagement and Well-being.
• Indian Journal of Psychiatry (2023): Anxiety and Social Media Use in Indian Youth
• Interviews and expert opinion from Dr. Shubhangi Parkar, Dr. Samir Parikh, and Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy.

The post Trapped in the Feed: How Social Media Algorithms Influence Young Indians’ Thoughts and Feelings appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

And the truth is simple:
This is not how a heritage site should look.

Drying clothes is not wrong.
People’s needs are not wrong. But choosing the only UNESCO-tagged railway station of our hills as the place to do it, that shows something deeper. It shows how casually we treat things that carry our identity.

Ghum is not just a station from 1881.
It’s not just old tracks and steam whistles.
It’s a symbol of who we are, what our hills represent, and how the world sees us. Yet today, it looks like a place we have stopped respecting.

And what hurts even more is the reaction: People walk past it without a second thought.
As if this is normal.
As if heritage is something that maintains itself.
As if the UNESCO board is enough to protect it.
It isn’t.

Heritage doesn’t die when buildings collapse. It dies when people stop caring.

I saw what Ghum has become, and it genuinely hurt me – not because the station changed, but because our attitude changed. If we don’t value our own heritage, what message are we passing to the next generation? What will they learn except indifference?
Tomorrow they will treat every public place the same way — because this is what they grew up seeing.

This is not about blaming anyone.
This is not about pointing fingers.
This is about acknowledging a simple truth:
We can do better.
We should do better.
Ghum deserves better.

A world heritage site should not look like an afterthought.
A place that carries our history should not look forgotten.
A station that once brought pride should not look neglected.

If Ghum could speak, it would not ask for luxury – only for basic respect. Only for the dignity it earned over more than a century.

A UNESCO board means nothing if the people around it don’t care. And today, after seeing Ghum, I felt one thing very clearly:
“Heritage is not protected by signs or titles – it’s protected by the people who live around it. That includes me. That includes you.”

Ghum Railway Station deserves more —
not just a title,
not just a board,
but the respect of the people who share its story.

Writes – Bidhan Rai Thulung

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Gorkha Hill Transport Composite Complex has been turned into a private hotel by the current disposition writes Yurish Pradhan

During the tenure of Subhash Ghisingh and under the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC), a vision was laid out to create a Gorkha Hill Transport Composite Complex in Darjeeling More, Siliguri – a project inspired by the Sikkim Nationalised Transport Composite Complex.

The plan was to build a unified transport hub that would serve as a lifeline for the hill population, designed to benefit both local passengers and hill taxi drivers across Darjeeling.

This initiative promised to bring organization and relief to the chaotic transport system of the hills. Passengers would have been able to conveniently find vehicles to destinations such as Kurseong, Sukhia, Mungpoo, and other hill regions, all from one central location.

For the drivers, it would have ended years of harassment from traffic restrictions, syndicate mafias, and irregular parking issues.

The complex was envisioned as a safe, structured, and publicly owned space a people’s project built through public funds and taxpayers’ money.

However, that vision has been betrayed.

The land, which was originally allotted for the welfare of the people, has reportedly been leased out to private operators, who have turned it into a commercial hotel. What was once meant to be a transport composite complex for public benefit, has now been converted into a private enterprise, depriving the hill community of a crucial public facility.

It is unacceptable that public properties built for the welfare of the common people are being taken over by private players for personal gain. Such actions enrich a few individuals while depriving the Gorkha community of facilities that were created for their collective well-being. This reflects a disturbing trend where the voices and rights of the working class are being ignored in the name of development and commercialization.

This act has caused public outrage, with citizens and drivers voicing their anger at what they see as a blatant misuse of public property. The decision reflects a growing pattern of privatization of community assets, where land and facilities created through collective effort and taxpayer money are slowly being transferred to private hands.

The people of the hills have every reason to feel betrayed. The Gorkha Hill Transport Composite Complex was not just a development project, it was a symbol of self-reliance, organization, and respect for local drivers who form the backbone of the hill economy. Its loss to private interests is not just the loss of land, but the loss of trust in governance and accountability.

The call from the people is clear – Public property must remain for public use. What belongs to the community must not be turned into a playground for private profit.

Writes: Yurish Pradhan

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Mahakal, The Mandir I Knew is a reflection by Abhimanyu on how a once inclusive Dara Mandir is gradually changing it’s nature, and if it’s a good thing?

Growing up in Darjeeling, the Dara Mandir was not just a temple to me but a space of spiritual coexistence. It shaped my idea of religion in many ways.

My earliest memories are of walking there with my parents and grandparents. My maternal grandfather, a devout Shiva bhakta, would walk barefoot every Monday from Harshing to Dara Mandir. His walk to the temple and back was not just a religious ritual but an expression of devotion rooted in place and community. On his way back, he would distribute prasad to everyone he met- irrespective of caste or religion.

What always intrigued me as a child was the unique spiritual landscape of the temple complex. A Buddhist lama would sit beside a Hindu pandit, and nearby, the bojuthan near the aloo dokan and the Kali Mandir was tended by a ‘Madhise’ Bahun.

These contradictions puzzled me- is Dara Mandir really a Hindu temple? or was it a Gumba? Or what is it even? These questions also shaped my understanding of what it meant to be Hindu in Darjeeling. Even the view of St. Andrew’s Church from the temple caves added to my sense of spirituality; it never became a contradiction, but a complement.

For me, being Hindu was never about rigid codes or centralized doctrines. Dara Mandir became a shared identity, a Darjeelingey or “Gorkha” way of being that embraced diversity and coexistence. I’ve met practicing Christians in Chowrasta who hold Dara Mandir in reverence, not out of religious obligation but out of respect for its place in our collective memory.

But lately, I’ve felt a growing sense of disconnection. The remaking of Dara Mandir in line with the recent trends in other parts of India (though perhaps well-intentioned by some) feels like an attempt to codify and standardize a spiritual experience that was always fluid and inclusive.

The loud bhajans echoing through the ‘backside’, the newly imposed dress codes, and the emphasis on conformity over community, which defines what it is to be Hindu and what it is not, have changed the atmosphere.

I’m not here to judge whether these changes are good or bad. Of course, change is inevitable, but I do want to express how disconnected I feel from the Dara Mandir I once knew.

This isn’t just nostalgia. The recent changes have alienated many of us who once found peace in the temple’s openness. I believe many others may feel similarly, and perhaps that’s why we’re seeing more voices speak up.

This article is not a statement of fact, but a personal reflection, and I’m simply sharing how I feel.

Writes: Abhimanyu

Pics: We are most grateful to the ace photographer Surendra Pradhan for permitting us to use his pics for the article.

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The hills deserve better is a poignant look by Pawan Thapa at how we are on our own, with no center or state standing for us

As the year draws to a close, it is time to pause and take stock of the times gone by. The past ten months has undoubtedly been a difficult one for the people of the Darjeeling and Kalimpong hills. With the festivities now behind us and the curtains about to be drawn on another year, one cannot ignore the pressing realities that surround us.

It is a well-known fact that the overall infrastructure across the hills has long been in a state of neglect. However, the recent spell of heavy rains has laid bare the true extent of decay. Beyond the tragic loss of lives and property, the entire transportation network has come to a standstill in almost every corner of the hills. The rural areas, in particular, have been hit the hardest, grappling daily with severe challenges to even the most basic mobility.

The quality of infrastructural projects has remained a persistent concern. Time and again, we witness roads constructed under various government schemes beginning to crumble within months of completion. Despite repeated public outcry, such malpractices have continued unchecked, often flourishing under the silent patronage of those in power.

Even in the face of a disaster of such unprecedented scale in recent memory, there has been an alarming absence of credible announcements, assurances, or long-term plans. The response from elected representatives has been largely limited to half-hearted, symbolic gestures, while a few have gone so far as to dress up their evasiveness in elaborate, decorative rhetoric.

The current dispensation has failed miserably on all fronts and by all measures. The much-touted alliance with the state government, formed on the plank of development, has yielded no tangible benefits for the people. Rural connectivity lies in complete disarray, access to safe drinking water remains a distant dream, and the condition of the National Highway is precarious at best. Corruption and nepotism within civic bodies have become deeply entrenched, eating away at the very foundations of public service and crippling civic amenities.

It would not be wrong to say that Darjeeling is going through an existential crisis. Once celebrated as the educational hub of the region, the number of students in our schools has steadily declined, and many institutions have witnessed a sharp downturn over the past decades. A record number of tea gardens have already shut down, and even after seventy-eight years of India’s independence, tea garden and cinchona plantation dwellers continue to live without ownership rights over their land, trapped in a semi-colonial setup that denies them basic dignity and security.

While massive infrastructural projects are being implemented across the country, none have found their way to the Hills in a manner that brings tangible improvement to the lives of the people. The ruling dispensation has failed to raise these concerns or mobilize public opinion to address these pressing issues.

One cannot help but reflect that we are already a quarter into the twenty-first century, yet we continue to grapple with basic necessities, transportation, drinking water, and healthcare. When will the time come when we no longer have to worry about such fundamental aspects of existence? When will we begin to discuss the blueprints of our economic and political future? our plans for human capital, innovation, and capability building in areas where the next generation of growth truly lies?

Despite repeated movements and the immense sacrifices in terms of lives and livelihoods, the parallel governance apparatus, handed down to us twice, has failed to address the deeper and more structural problems faced by the people of the hills. What was once envisioned as an instrument of empowerment has now become a redundant tool, stripped of its authority and reduced to a mechanism of repression against the very people it was meant to serve.

The people of the hills are yearning for genuine change, and the only weapon they possess is their vote. It is therefore imperative that we do not fall prey to the propaganda machinery that thrives on rhetoric and raw emotions. We must decide wisely, lest we spend another five years trapped in regret, lamenting unfulfilled promises and watching our backyards crumble further.

This is not merely a time to look back in despair, it is a call to look forward with clarity. The hills deserve better. The people deserve dignity, opportunity, and honest governance. The future will belong to those who have the courage to demand it.

The Author: Pawan Thapa is an advocate by profession, and a social change-maker by choice

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On 4 October 2023, the River Teesta rose to catastrophic levels leaving a trail of devastation and destruction that Sikkim, Darjeeling and Kalimpong are still recovering from. The Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) from the South Lonak Lake in North Sikkim at 17,300 feet above mean sea level came crashing down the Lachen Chu in North Sikkim wrecking havoc along its path. The waters raced down into the already brimming reservoir of the 1200MW Sikkim Urja Dam at Chungthang (5870ft AMSL) which was quickly overwhelmed and burst, releasing a wall of water that unleashed with a rage not experienced in our lifetime. The deluge swept through the Teesta valley, destroying everything in its 162 km rampage from the glacier to NHPC Teesta Low Dam Project (TLDP) III at 27th Mile in Kalimpong district. It continued its destructive flow into parts of North Bengal and Bangladesh.

Countless lives and livelihoods were lost (some documented and many not counted nor considered). Roads, bridges, hydropower dams, defense installations were washed away on that fateful day. For a disaster this size, the mainstream media coverage was limited and was mostly reported as the ‘Sikkim Disaster’. It did not help that West Bengal failed to officially call it a disaster. There was an outpouring of community response with leaders and volunteers pouring out in great numbers in Sikkim, Darjeeling and Kaimpong to clear out the rubble and provide relief especially to people who lived along the lower reaches of the Teesta. Relief work began with great gusto but we realise that it is not so simple as building houses alone or distributing financial aid, it needs to make sense to the lives of the impacted communities. The memory of the disaster continues till date especially during the monsoons, yet these memories have not been converted to concerted action that is visionary and necessary.

Post the tragic GLOF event, we have lived through 2 monsoons. It is now a given, that the lifeline to Kalimpong and Sikkim from Siliguri will be broken multiple times during the rains, that Teesta will breach its bank at the slightest of upstream rainfall and overflow onto the highway, stalling traffic for hours on end. It is accepted that North Sikkim will get cut off and there will be more dramatic landslides impacting lives, livelihoods and the landscape. It has become common to see a stream of vehicles to Sikkim passing by Kalimpong or Darjeeling with the frequent closing of NH 10 due to landslides, rockfalls or the highway sinking. These alternate routes take at the very least double the normal travel time and the costs on the driver’s wellbeing, travelers’ added expenditures, disturbance caused to communities, and the perilous conditions of the alternate roads find little mention and are not factored. Two dry seasons have passed by but not much has been done for long term rehabilitation of the impacts of the disaster and strengthening infrastructure that does not come tumbling down with the rains.

The urgency and criticality for action is highlighted by the Centre of Science 2025 analysis of India’s Atlas on Weather Disasters  which shows that the Himalaya have faced extreme weather for 822 days since 2022, killing 2,683 people across 13 states and UTs.  The 2025 monsoon has been extremely harsh on the people and ecology of the Himalaya with a spate of big disasters. An analysis of news for 2025 till date shows that more than 1774 lives lost, 448 injured, 176 missing and over Rs 12 crores loss estimated. The increasing frequency and magnitude of disasters in our Himalaya is a result of our development trajectories as well as impacts of climate crisis impacts.

The Teesta Disaster 2023 with its catastrophic magnitude showed flaws in our development choices, disaster management systems, priorities including national and regional focuses. The GLOF is largely due to the impacts of the climate crisis that has resulted in faster melting of glaciers in the Himalaya as global warming is affecting the Himalaya most after the poles. A global phenomenon due to the production and consumption patterns of the industrialised nations and regions, impacts a low carbon footprint Himalaya with no global mechanism to compensate for the loss and damage to a vulnerable region.  The GLOF waters added to the Chungthang Dam waters wreaking havoc and adding to the discourse against misplaced large hydropower in the Himalaya that is extractive as well as destructive of the landscape and people.

At a national level, mountain disasters do not feature high on the priority list with a response system that is based on body counts and not socio-ecological loss and damage. The disasters in the Himalaya especially if it is not in urban spaces just do not add up to large numbers that bring national focus that is needed for proper response.  The first line of response in the Teesta Disaster were the immediate communities highlighting the need for local capacities in disaster response. While significant relief work was invested it did not get translated to the transboundary regional needs that the Teesta river basin flows through. The ‘Sikkim Disaster’ narrative limited interventions to a singular state and did not focus on interstate collaborative effort that was much needed. The response in itself was highly relief centric and with memory fading, rehabilitation work that is sustainable, disaster resilient, livelihood focussed and based on community participation and equity did not take priority. These insights are inherent flaws in the disaster management institutions that are siloed and without the much needed synergies across different governments departments and people. Teesta Disaster 2023 cannot be just looked at from a relief and rehabilitation lens; it is a socio-ecological restorative, justice and equity issue that goes beyond departmental and political boundaries. This cannot be done just at the local level but requires policy and adequate resource allocations.

Darjeeling Himalaya Initiative and Save the Hills led by Wing Commander Praful Rao, in three memorandums (2023 to 2024) had called on the need for an expert committee that recommends short, medium and long term action for resilience building and implementation of these interventions with utmost priority. They seem to have fallen to deaf ears as the Teesta still flows way above the danger marks, communication infrastructure keeps breaking and landslides keep occurring across the landscape with communities impacted by it constantly with immediate relief or bandaid interventions the priority.

The Teesta Disaster 2023 must not fade away from our memories, we need to proactively engage with it and incorporate them in our development strategies that makes our landscape and communities more resilient. It cannot be relegated to a 2023 history only, as disasters in our region cannot be looked at from a singular timeline but a continuum that cascades with lessons to be learnt from. The Teesta had risen in rage in October 1968 too and could rise up once again as the South Lonak Lake, and many other glacial lakes are still expanding. We cannot afford once again to say that scientists and experts had predicted the GLOF and not take any action. It is critically important to take this forward as a sustainable mountain development issue that questions how infrastructure is built in the mountains, especially large dams and roads. National policies, practices and resource allocation to the Himalaya have to be sensitive and appropriate to the importance and fragility of our landscapes. Engagement at a transboundary landscape level that goes beyond administrative, political and bureaucratic boundaries for collaborative visioning and planning is much needed. Ensuring loss and damage is minimal in the future and most importantly our interventions in the Sikkim and Darjeeling Himalaya must be such that they do not invite disasters. We might forget the Teesta Disaster 2023 but Teesta never forgets and the choice and responsibility is ours.

Writes – Roshan Rai. Development Worker at DLR Prerna, Secretary Integrated Mountain Initiative and Darjeeling Himalaya Initiative and member Zero Waste Himalaya.

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