I. Geographical Indication and the Construction of Darjeeling Tea

A. Tea Board of India: Darjeeling tea "just happens" (Besky 2014:89)
B. Geographical Indication status

1. Darjeeling tea, 1999
2. World Trade Organization regulated
3. Garden image on tea box: "Up in the mist-covered Himalayan Highlands lies Darjeeling, a sacred tea town. We pay respect by blending Darjeeling teas from only the best gardens for an extraordinary tea." "Ingredients: 100% hand-picked Darjeeling tea"
4. Locate products in place as rare, premium price
5. Besky: GI creates "a market in which the consumption of tea is linked to fetishized experiences of place and of labor" (91).
6. Presumed tradition, authenticity of production techniques
7. Terroir: taste of place AND intellectual property
8. Cultural performances and values of time-honored craft--> irony of tea's history of colonial, plantation production

C. Tripartite moral economy

1. Workers: mothers who nurture plants, care = work
2. GI: workers nurture plants, but aesthetic vision: care = idealized natural beauty of landscape and people
3. Darjeeling tea becomes rooted in place and patrimony of nation
4. Producers are made directly relatable to consumers (removed from tripartite moral economy)
5. Plantations = heritage sites

D. GI erases colonial heritage, replaces it with aesthetics

1. How to drink tea (Besky 2014: 97)
2. Women naturalized aesthetically as of the earth
3. Workers' care is timeless, sacred
4. "Third World agrarian imaginary in which low-paid workers are recast as 'natural' guardians of the landscape" (99)
5. No coolies, migrant workers, low-wage laborers

E. Intellectual property

1. Legal protections for 87 gardens in specific area
2. "Others" Nepali tea as imitation
3. Case against Republic of Tea for "Darjeeling nouveau"
4. Permeable borders become fixed
5. Place-based tourism in search of authenticity

F. Erasure of role of plantation management

1. Fetishizes relationship between workers and plants
2. What about social context for labor?
3. Empty relationship: "Increasingly, workers are asked to participate, not in a reciprocal relationship to land and management, but in a performative relationship to consumers" (112).

 

II. Fair Trade

A. Consumers can help producers through purchase
B. Began in Latin American coffee cooperatives, now includes hired labor
C. Late 1990s: Fairtrade Labelling Organizations (FLO) International began certifying Indian tea plantations

1. FLO sets minimum prices
2. FLO sets premium that producer community will distribute

a. Cooperative: members decide
b. Tea plantations: Joint Body of workers and management
c. Result: management has greater power

D. Besky: Fair Trade for Darjeeling tea plantations works against workers: http://www.ucpress.edu/ebook.php?isbn=9780520957602

1. Loans for individualized entrepreneurship: Prakriti and the cow
2. Can't address wages on plantations (set by Indian government)

E. Fair trade acts as if first-world consumer is only viable source of rescue
F. Darjeeling exception: Plantation owners use premiums to supply facilities (medicine, shelter, roads) already mandated by Indian law
G. Fair Trade doesn't change workers' situations, its individualized market approach ignores social and political context of welfare and rights, and makes privileged consumers think they have helped people
H. Hunger strike on a fair trade plantation: owners and workers are not equal, and consumers can't fix this with their benevolence (133).

 

III. Gorkhaland

A. Anderson: colonial era categories fueled national and ethnic identities
B. Marginality of Nepali workers in Darjeeling --> Gorkhaland movement

1. Began early 20th century, momentum in 1980s and 2007-11
2. 1950: Peace and Friendship Treaty between India and Nepal

a. Nepali settled in India before 1950 = "natural citizen"
b. Porous boundary between countries
c. Ironic result: makes Nepalis seem like permanent migrants

C. Gorkhaland leaders: separate state needed to recognize indigenous belonging to land

1. History of residence
2. Primordial: natural connection to that land

D. 2007: claims that Gorkhas built Darjeeling, it was always Nepali

1. Emphasize men's military labor, women's tea labor
2. Downplay historical migration patterns

E. Result: ownership of land, rather than economic relationships to land, is key to justice
F. Madan's assassination

1. Nepali landowner and politician, Gorkha activist
2. Seen as less militaristically masculine, too elite or pretentious
3. Asked whether Gorkhaland would in fact achieve what they wanted (167)
4. Besky: Madan was killed because he highlighted tension between historical and primordial aspects of Gorkha identity
5. Madan's death undermined support for Gorkhaland movement

G. Tension remains: "The ultimate feeling of the Gorkhaland political elite was its reliance on a discourse in which the connection between Nepalis and land -- indeed, between landscape and identity -- existed outside of or prior to historical conditions. For tea workers, and indeed for many rank-and-file Gorkhaland activists between 2007 and 2011, to strive for justice was to acknowledge histories of service and care, the repressive and hopeful pillars of Gorkha identity" (169).

 

IV. Can a Plantation become a garden, a farm or a homeland?

A. Workers see social investment in plantations as breaking down
B. GI, fair trade, and Gorkhaland don't address what workers see as injustice

1. Movement from industri to bisnis
2. GI, Fair Trade, Gorkhaland make tea workers consumable, "imaginary agricultural subjects" (176)
3. Disciplined forgetting of colonial histories, unequal power relations, and structural inequality (176)

C. Justice for workers = tripartite relationship with juridical, kin, economic, and ecological components
D. What houses signify
E. Is justice possible in the plantation model?

1. Management is accountable to workers
2. To whom are consumers responsible?