There are over ten thousand tea estates, employing about fifty lakh people, through the length and breadth of India – from Darjeeling, Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the east to Himachal Pradesh in the north, and Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala in the south. In 2001, one of our community members was elected from amongst all the tea plantation workers in India to attend a four-day global conference organised by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO). Ruplal Rai, from our Koilapani, left for Lingen in Germany to attend the conference on 16 September, 2001. It was like a dream come true for Ruplal, and for all of our community, that someone from Makaibari had been given such a great honour.

On his arrival in Dusseldorf, Ruplal thought he was in paradise. He would not have believed that such wonderful infrastructure could exist in this world. He was amazed at the beautiful autobahns (highways), and the high speeds at which traffic moved on them. The houses, the avenues, the shops and the cars – he was awed by them all. He could not believe that such order, as he found in Germany, was possible.

At the conference, he was greatly cheered to find a facsimile from me in Nepali waiting for him. He felt very proud to know that the entire Makaibari community was supporting him – he was alone in the gathering of five hundred visitors, for whom the organisers had searched in order to deliver the fax.