Birpara Tea Garden

Birpara Tea Garden (or simply Birpara) is a village, a tea garden and two gram panchayats in the Madarihat-Birpara CD block in the Alipurduar subdivision of the Alipurduar district in the state of West Bengal, India.

Birpara Tea Garden Birpara
Village
Birpara Tea Garden Location in West Bengal, India Birpara Tea Garden Birpara Tea Garden (India)
Coordinates: 26.7113°N 89.1366°E
Country	India
State	West Bengal
District	Alipurduar
Population  (2011)
• Total	42,080
Time zone	UTC+5:30 (IST)
PIN	735204
Telephone/STD code	03561
Vehicle registration	WB
Lok Sabha constituency	Alipurduars
Vidhan Sabha constituency	Madarihat
Website	alipurduar.gov.in

Geography

🌍

Places and tea estates in the western portion of Alipurdar subdivision (including Madarihat-Birpara, Falakata and Alipuduar I CD blocks) in Alipurduar district CT: census town, R: rural/ urban centre, N: neighbourhood, NP: national park/ wildlife sanctuary, TE: tea estate Abbreviations used in names – TG for Tea Garden (town/village), TE for Tea Estate Owing to space constraints in the small map, the actual locations in a larger map may vary slightly

Location

Birpara is located at 26.7113°N 89.1366°E.

According to the map of the Madarihat CD block on page 193 in the District Census Handbook, Jalpaiguri, 2011 census, Birpara police station is shown as being a part of Birpara Tea Garden village/ mouza.[1]

Birpara Tea Garden spared a portion of their cultivable land for the establishment of Birpara town, many years ago. Over the years, it has developed as an important town in the area.[2]

Area overview

Alipurduar district is covered by two maps. It is an extensive area in the eastern end of the Dooars in West Bengal. It is undulating country, largely forested, with numerous rivers flowing down from the outer ranges of the Himalayas in Bhutan. It is a predominantly rural area with 79.38% of the population living in the rural areas. The district has 1 municipal town and 20 census towns and that means 20.62% of the population lives in urban areas. The scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, taken together, form more than half the population in all the six community development blocks in the district. There is a high concentration of tribal people (scheduled tribes) in the three northern blocks of the district.[3][4][5]

Note: The map alongside presents some of the notable locations in the subdivision. All places marked in the map are linked in the larger full screen map.

The Dooars: A World

After we arrived at New Jalpaiguri Railway Station, he (my husband) drove me out into the hot and humid plains to Birpara Tea Garden... The Dooars is a world that abounds in natural beauty, with its forests, rivers and mountains. There are more than two hundred tea gardens here… The early British planters brought with them thousands of migrant Adivasi labourers from the neighbouring Chhotta Nagpur region. They also brought Nepali workers from the hills. The original inhabitants of the area were gradually outnumbered. North Bengal began to grow into the multi-ethnic region it has become today.

Where I now live, the nearest town is just two kilometers away. National Highway 31, as well as the second broad gauge line from Guwahati to Delhi, runs less than one kilometere away from my house. There are gardens in the interior too, from where a ride to the nearest town could take an hour's drive over riverbeds or through dark and frightening forests full of wild animals. We even have wild elephants, snakes and leopards that very often make their way into our bungalow compound!

Since 1992, we’ve had satellite television, and since 1999 we’ve had Internet connections. We didn’t have a phone line that could connect us to family in Delhi until 1996, though! We wrote letters and waited for weeks for replies to reach us.

Life is an amazing and curious mix of old and new, civilization and wilderness, natural beauty and cultivated plantations.[6]

Gowri Mohanakrishnan

Civic administration

Police station

Birpara police station has jurisdiction over a part of the Madarihat-Birpara CD block.[7][8]

Demographics

According to the 2011 Census of India, Birpara Tea Garden had a total population of 42,080 of which 21,226 (50%) were males and 20,854 (50%) were females. There were 4,788 persons in the age range of 0 to 6 years. The total number of literate people in Birpara Tea Garden was 28,020 (75.14% of the population over 6 years).[9]

Economy

In 1859, a young Scottish merchant, Walter Duncan, started business ventures in India. Initiated as Playfair Duncan company, it grew as Duncan Brothers, amongst the earliest companies being Birpara Tea Company and Anglo-India Jute Mills. The Goenka family took over Duncan Brothers in 1951, and under the leadership of G.P.Goenka, diversified substantially and emerged as one of the top business houses in the country. The Tea Division of Duncans has nine tea gardens in the Dooars – Birpara, Hantapara, Dumchipara, Lankapara, Tulsipara, Garganda, Killot, Nagaisuri, Bagracote – and one garden in the Terai region at Gungram. The company has been regularly carrying out uprooting, replanting and rejuvenation of tea areas. It has high quality clonal gardens and has expanded substantially over the years. Birpara Tea Estate has 798.78 hectares of mature tea and 128.65 hectares of young tea. In 1998-99, it produced 1.817 million kg of tea. Yields in Duncan gardens are double that of the national average.[10][11]

The Tea Division of the Duncan Goenka group has been facing rough weather on the labour front and has been in the news. As per newspaper reports, there is likelihood of ownership change.[12][13][14]

Transport

There is a station at Dalgaon, nearby, on the New Jalpaiguri-Alipurduar-Samuktala line.

Education

Birpara College was established in 1986. Affiliated with the University of North Bengal, it offers honours courses in Bengali, Nepali, geography, history, sociology, a general course in arts, and honours and general courses in commerce.[15]

References

1. "District Census Handbook Jalpaiguri, Series 20, Part XII A , 2011 census" (PDF). page 193: Map of Madarihat CD block. Directorate of Census Operations West Bengal. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
2. "Birpara College". The history of Birpara. BC. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
3. "District Statistical Handbook 2014 Jalpaiguri". Tables 2.2, 2.4b. Department of Planning and Statistics, Government of West Bengal. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
4. "CD block Wise Primary Census Abstract Data(PCA)". 2011 census: West Bengal – District-wise CD blocks. Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
5. "District Census Handbook, Jalpaiguri, Series 20, Part XIIA" (PDF). Census of India 2011, page 13 Physiography. Directorate of Census Operations, West Bengal. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
6. The Journal of an Indian Tea Planter’s wife, Seventh Chords, 30 April 2006
7. "District Statistical Handbook 2014 Jalpaiguri". Tables 2.1, 2.2. Department of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of West Bengal. Archived from the original on 21 January 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
8. "Search a Police Station". Alipurduar Police. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
9. "2011 Census – Primary Census Abstract Data Tables". West Bengal – District-wise. Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
10. "Duncan Goenka Group". About Us. Duncan. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
11. "Tea Garden". Duncans. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
12. "Duncan's 'abandoned' tea estate to reopen on November 23". The Indian Express, 21 November 2016. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
13. "2 tea gardens reopen". The Telegraph, 5 February 2018. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
14. "Managers exit 6 Duncan tea gardens". The Telegraph, 27 February 2019. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
15. "Birpara College". BC. Retrieved 26 June 2020.