Darjeeling’s Final Harvest. 🧵
In today’s
@htTweets
Op-Ed section, I wrote about the perilous situation facing Darjeelings heritage tea gardens.
And what we can do to help fix it.
(1/n)
NDA seat share in 2014-
Maharashtra: 41/48
Rajasthan 25/25
Gujarat: 26/26
MP: 27/29
Bihar: 28/40
Chatt: 10/11
Assam: 7/14
Haryana: 7/10
Jharkh: 12/14
Karnatka: 17/28
Forget abt UP, what I cant understand is how will
@BJP4India
hold on to such numbers in ANY 1 of these states?
I went to Oxford for grad school post Ashoka and chose to come back and revive our heritage tea garden in Darjeeling.
All because the Ashoka Education/Professors instilled a sense of curiosity, responsibility & moral compass. This “western focused” education argument is bogus.
@sbikh
Ashoka education is too expensive for the majority of Indians and too elitist.Focused fully on the west as if preparing Indians for the US. You need to have much more scholarships and create stars for India not students who aspire for the US-See Ashoka as a stepping stone
Let me go collect all the possible degrees in the world from SOAS, Cambridge, Harvard etc, add it to my Twitter profile bio, continue working abroad, but for virtue signalling purposes, take a dump on Ashoka University.
To put it politely, please fuck off
If you’re an artist- writer, musician, painter, ecologist, filmmaker— and you’d like to do a residency at Second Chance House, Selim Hill, write to me at sparsh
@dorjeteas
.com.
There’s something that just doesn’t sit right with me when I see Indian brands celebrating the coronation of a King who’s not ours, belonging to a family we fought against, part of an institution that we’ve now removed in our own land, & from a country that once ruled over us!
A good time to bring this back up. An institution that has been a significant contributor to India’s growth story is facing very unfair and high handed vitriol for very petty reasons.
Truly sad to see the forced bankruptcy of Indian policy and scholarship that is underway.
'Demise of Centre for Policy Research will be India’s tragedy. Here’s an insider history'
@SparshAgarwall
, MPhil student in International Relations at Oxford University formerly with
@CPR_India
, writes
#ThePrintOpinion
"For many like me, who were moulded by
@CPR_India
's walls that whispered to us about our intellectual responsibilities, & its faculty members who taught us to think deeply, read widely, & discuss freely, it will be akin to losing a hospice & family."
I wrote for
@ThePrintIndia
'Demise of Centre for Policy Research will be India’s tragedy. Here’s an insider history'
@SparshAgarwall
, MPhil student in International Relations at Oxford University formerly with
@CPR_India
, writes
#ThePrintOpinion
Last night some of us painted the rather dull pathways leading to Ashoka’s classrooms with the Ashokan pillar, the tricolour, poetry verses & emblems of Nehru, Gandhi and Ambedkar.
In the morning we see the admin has had it washed away.
How paranoid can you be
@AshokaUniv
?
thrilled that my college roommate
@jyotishankar_n
and I received acceptance letters from the same grad school on the same day
some respite in the time of a pandemic
TLDR - My family owns and manages the heritage Selim Hill Tea Garden in Darjeeling.
In a bid to rescue it from total collapse, we have launched Dorje - a D2C Darjeeling Tea brand which works on subscriptions.
Read on for how and why we began (/n)
We realised that the legacy and romance of Darjeeling, and the journey it signifies, is best represented in the symbol of its famous Toy Train (DHR).
We are hoping to bring about a renaissance in Darjeeling Tea consumption in India.
All aboard our Tea journey!
But there is something huge that the West can do to help this transition.
The West needs to make a big-hearted, open and sincere offer to Russia. Join our clubs. Revitalise your European side. Bit like they did to Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe.
Delivered my first lecture yesterday for
@Mahmudabad
's class. I covered Islamic Art and the spiritual unity undergirding it.
Would just like to take this opportunity to apologize to all those professors who I've bitched about in the past. Damn that was tough!
This week I spoke to
@humza_jilani
of
@TheEconomist
to draw attention to the existential crisis facing Darjeeling Tea:
1. Proliferation of fake ‘Darjeeling tea’ from Nepal
2. Climate Change
3. Lack of appetite from govt and planters to work together
Remains my favourite moment from Edge of Democracy.
What an absolute political icon for having the courage to go to jail to maintain integrity to the democratic system, however unjust it was to him. To come back from jail and come back to power through the right electoral way!
A touching tribute in todays TOI to the Raja of Mahmudabad, may he rest in peace.
Almost exactly 5 years ago, we were hosted by him to observe Muharram— a life changing experience.
He was a kind man with the heart of a king, the words of a poet, & the mind of a scientist.
My brother's climate tech company Alt Carbon is hiring for the Founder's Office.
Primary responsibilities: Partnerships/Sales, Stakeholder Management, Product Management, Policy & PR (and creating lots of ppts).
If you're from the think tank/policy world, you'll fit right in
“I didn’t expect to be asked so many profound questions about Nazi Germany when I was coming to India. Just leaving it out there in the room.”
@adam_tooze
at the
@CPR_India
Dialogues, in conversation with
@pbmehta
.
I spoke to the
@FinancialTimes
about the need to create a Futures market for Tea.
The financialization of CTC teas can be a game changer.
We need to price the commodity in the face of huge volatility that is staring us in the face due to climate change:
CPR, that has been raided today by I-T, funded by Ford, Omidyar, Namati etc headed (CEO & Dir) by Yamini Aiyar, daughter of INC leader Mani Shankar Aiyar. CPR only aim to target economy & governance policies by Modi govt to push in other direction.
Can’t believe that this is the last week of undergraduate classes. Can’t believe that this is how we get to say goodbye to our professors, the classrooms we’ve spent so much time in, and our batchmates who we might never see again.
The absurdity of it all is killing me.
From India all the way to the US, cutting through populist regimes in Brazil, Philippines, Hungary, Israel, Turkey and Britain:
Elect a pyromaniac, expect a fire.
There is a major labour exodus from Maharashtra to UP/Bihar on the cards if the government doesn’t lockdown immediately.
Covid 19 is going to travel through India’s railways to the rural sector. If this spillover isn’t stopped it’s going to wreck havoc for us.
#Coronavirus
In this week’s The Intelligence Podcast by
@TheEconomist
, I was invited to speak about the fable of Darjeeling’s best kept secret: the Full Moon White Teas.
Thanks to
@humza_jilani
for highlighting Darjeeling’s great threats.
24:00 mins onwards:
@aarushi__a
Ppl need to come to terms with the fact that they’re a lot of mediocrity in Indian academia and simply being westernphobic is merely an exercise in intellectual shallowness
The govt would do well to remember Louis Pasteur’s words: “Gentlemen, it’s the microbes who will have the last word,” & plan for the inevitable, instead of deluding itself that imm checks can prevent the disease from entering.
I co-write for
@the_hindu
.
Day 10/11 of our South Asia Field Trip:
Featuring Khan Market & Pianoman, Old Dili and yellow autos, an enriching discussion with the ever audacious
@CPR_India
, Bharathnatyam at the IIC, gurudwaras, temples and masjids.
@godbole_shilpa
@akkiman
Our house at Selim Hill Tea Garden, in Darjeeling, is called Second Chance House— a moniker for our mission to revive our family estate with
@DorjeTeas
!
how will future historians do archival work? will they sit and comb through twitter feeds of politicians? how will they make sense of the information overload that we have on a daily basis? or will they just relegate it to an AI system which deals with such things?
What an absolute privilege to have worked for Yamini at CPR. How I wish I could describe what an intellectually wonderful ecosystem this used to be. Every floor and every room had a national expert working on a different field, with open doors and broad minds! More power to you!
An absolute privilege to have lead & fought for this remarkable institution. CPR's fierce intellectual independence and democratic spirit have enriched me enormously.
Delighted that
@CPR_India
leadership will now be in the very capable hands of my wonderful colleague Srinivas.
Just decided that the only reunion that I will ever go to in my life will be if
@AshokaUniv
decides to host a reunion for the first three batches, 20 years down the line.
Those batches were as important as the red brick stones in helping materialise this monumental project!
Darjeeling & Champagne, Crisis & Crossroads.
🧵 ⬇️ about the crisis facing India’s most recognisable export.
And what can the Treaty of Versailles teach us!
I spoke to
@b_parkyn
of
@FT
about the crisis facing Darjeeling.
The Tatas are the biggest buyers & their decision to blend Nepal teas has been a catalyst for the crisis.
The solution is staring us in the face: estates need to go direct to consumers.
More like the sufi pir who guided us on the journey.
Thank you so much for the mentorship, guidance, classes and all those Chinese meals that have made this possible!
During these trying times very proud of two Ashoka students who got into
@UniofOxford
to pursue their graduate degrees.
I had the good fortune of travelling with them for part of their journey at
@AshokaUniv
!
#GoodNews
in the time of
#Covid_19
A reminder to Ashoka's Founders, Management, and Trustees of their own words.
Live up to them for god's sake. Universities are made of people, minds, souls, and hearts, not land or paper.
Today we woke up to a delightful surprise.
@DorjeTeas
& Selim Hill Tea Garden have been featured in the
@nytimes
.
Warms my heart to see Selim Hill Collective as the centrepiece which is made up of dear friends from across the world!
In picture: our dear Second Chance House!
Day 5 of our South Asia Field Trip, ft. Second Chance House, Darjeeling.
Featuring drenched hikes, human Cluedo, misty morning & washed out days, an all day barbecue, local Phalle, Risk with IR students, and surprise last moment visitors.
India art fair was a disgrace to art. A manifestation of bourgeois art in all its form. This was probably the only decent thing at display and it was removed.
It was apparent that the govt has a fragile ego but now it’s also clear that the Fair organisers have no spine.
Today I interviewed Amb. V. M. M. Nair as part of an ongoing Oral History project on Pt. Nehru.
He is the oldest surviving ICS officer in all the Commonwealth countries. As someone who's 100 years old, he faces a hearing and a memory impairment. (1/n)
Technically lava can kill coronavirus, but there's a good reason why no-one is using it in the fight against the ongoing pandemic: nothing else would survive the encounter with molten rock either.
Missing the work station in room 522 of
@AshokaUniv
.
When I left for the mid sem break I didn’t realise that it was the last time I would be a resident of the room that I had come to call home. Slowly sinking in.
@jyotishankar_n
Today is the 56th death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru.
This is his Will and Testament engraved on a plaque in Teen Murti House.
He wanted his ashes taken on a plane and scattered such that it became one with the soil of India, the fields where the peasants toiled.
If you’re tired of Netflix/Hotstar/Prime, go to
@mubi
’s website, and create a free account through your college ID.
They upload 1 Int & 1 Indian film everyday and show 30 at a time. Great curation! Also don’t feel bad to watch for free they’re funded by the EU.
Your welcome.
history comes a full circle when an indian banking magnate uses mao's analogy of 'many flowers blooming' to warn against monopolisation and crony capitalism as risks to india's long term growth
can’t indulge in quarantine reading because of 2 mid sem papers and 20k words for my thesis that’s due. can’t finish this work because I’m frustrated that I can’t indulge in quarantine leisure reading. the vicious cycle is driving me nuts.
I'm a little stunned by the impact of
@sharktankindia
& also how
@letsblinkit
is leaps & bounds ahead of platforms like
@bigbasket_com
and
@Swiggy
.
Here's hoping other quick commerce platforms also follow suit on
@albinder
's generous offer and support next gen India's startups!
To all those who have been detained in Bangalore and Delhi and every where else, know this:
Calcutta came out during peak siesta time to show our solidarity!
Day 8/9 of our South Asia field trip.
Featuring Independence Day celebrations at Selim Hill Tea Garden, abandoned toy train engines, tea bush planting, longer hikes, trips to nearby hamlets, and encountering the Indian monsoons in its full might.
Darjeeling ofc is known for its colonial bungalows, lush mountains, murder mysteries, old legends, eccentric characters, and world famous tea.
But today it’s known for something else.
Delighted to have
@vineetasng
&
@kaushikmkj
on board the
@DorjeTeas
journey!
Main akela hi chala tha janib-e-manzil magar
Log saath aate gaye aur karwaan banta gaya
Super interview between Karan Thapar and
@EmergingRoy
. So good to see you back in action, in full swing, and with your wit and analysis as sharp as ever!
Day 6/7 of our South Asia field trip.
Featuring and IR pub quiz, Gondhoraj lemons, Dibakar Banerjee’s cult Byomkesh Bakshi classic, tea factory tours, barfis and laddoos, wandering above the sea of fog and getting lost among the wilderness.
In today’s
@EconomicTimes
, I wrote about the Voluntary Carbons Market(VCM).
“On the journey towards ‘net zero’, the VCM represents a critical solution to India’s climate ambitions.
Darjeeling has the potential to become a beacon of hope in this quest.”
🧵On India Twitter in last few days, repeated contention that the US didn't speak out after Chinese military action vs India at their border in 2020. People say, "what has US said? nothing"
a. it has said plenty
b. it's been more explicitly critical of PRC than GOI
1/
Facts v Modi ji’s historical jealousy:
1. Nehru was already Prime Minister in the interim government of 1946.
2. In his Obj Res(Dec ‘46) Nehru requests Muslim League to join the constituent assembly instead of partitioning the country. (1/n)
PM in his LS Reply in Debate on President’s Address said (without naming) that because Nehru wanted to be PM therefore he agreed to Partition. I welcome this statement
To the question—how did Putin plan his overnight invasion, and what was the logic:
“He has three advisers,” Sergei Lavrov replied, according to the oligarch. “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”
A quote for future historians!
If Yes Bank doesn’t allow depositors access to their money in the event of their own bankruptcy, how’s it diff from chit funds which went bust?
Saving the bank is one thing, but how have the loans gone from 55k crores to 240k crores in 5 years and the econ is still not growing?
so annoyed with apparently educated students coming back from the US who haven’t been checked, are not isolating themselves, but are instead gallivanting around Calcutta.
these guys are definitely carriers given they’ve come through crowded airports & are treating it as a joke.
Kashmir has now also been robbed of the centenary of their affront. In the coming years, 5th August shall never be remembered for Kashmir. It shall always be for Ayodhya.
That’s how sacred spaces overshadow wronged places, how memory is distorted, and how trauma is denied.