Workers on long tea break in Darjeeling

At the Happy Valley estate, where large painted signs boast of providing organic tea to Harrods, it was unnaturally quiet. Usually at this time of year - midway through the second flush, or crop - these steep hillsides of densely planted bushes would be filled with women plucking the leaves and dropping them into woven baskets on their backs.

Instead, they sit inside their small, sheet-metal shacks, idling away the damp afternoon.

Across the Darjeeling hills, life has come to a standstill. An indefinite strike, or "bandh", called last week by activists demanding a separate state, has closed down schools, roads, businesses, hotels and - crucially - the tea estates. As a result, the day labourers who earn just 53 rupees ($1.68) a day picking tea to be sold to well-heeled customers in London's Knightsbridge, are currently getting nothing.

Yet - remarkably, in view of the hardship they are enduring - these workers support the strike and its goals. Most of them are ethnic Gorkhas and believe the creation of Gorkhaland will transform their lives.

"Suffering falls on you when you cannot work," said one tea picker, a 30-year-old woman, bouncing a baby on her knee. "But everything will change if we get Gorkhaland. We will get good jobs, education, everything."

The demand for a Gorkha state - but one that would remain firmly part of India - is nothing new.

Two decades ago these steeply forested valleys, around which the mist can wrap itself for days, were awash with separatist violence and a counter-insurgency operation that killed at least 1200 people before a ceasefire was brokered.

Now, having turned their backs on violence, a Gorkha political party formed two years ago, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), says it is using tactics pioneered by Mahatma Gandhi to try and secure its goals.

The agitation for a separate state has both an economic and social basis. Ever since independence, say activists, the Darjeeling region has been overlooked by the West Bengal state government in Kolkata. There are not enough schools, not enough hospitals and insufficient development.

The British established Darjeeling as a summer retreat and tea-producing area in the mid-19th century. Darjeeling, once known as the Queen of the Hills, now suffers from broken roads and a crumbling infrastructure.

It is a terrible irony that in one of the wettest parts of India there is a severe shortage of water. Every day people use plastic containers to collect water from tankers and broken pipes.

Beyond the economic factors, there is an issue of identity. The Gorkhas, who can be found from Nepal across a swathe of northern India, say they suffer discrimination from other Indians.

"Whenever we go anywhere like Delhi or Mumbai, people think we're foreigners. They think we are from Nepal," said Anuphang Subha, who owns a business in the town. "If we have Gorkhaland, people will know we are from India."

The drive for Gorkhaland is being led by Bimal Gurung, who formed the GJM after falling out with another Gorkha leader who had led the separatist movement for the previous three decades. He is known as a passionate speaker, capable of rousing a crowd.

Gurung said the strike was designed to force the politicians in Delhi to take notice. The federal Government had agreed to another round of three-way talks with the GJM and officials from West Bengal next month, but he said he wanted quicker action. Asked whether the strike - enforced by GJM supporters who have set up roadblocks across the hills while the police remain inside their buildings - was legal, he responded that "It is beside the point whether it is legal or not. We are doing what we need to do."

Gurung is aware that one of the key levers at his disposal is to put pressure on the region's 87 tea estates, many owned by wealthy, well-connected individuals based in Kolkata. The estates support almost half of the region's 1.6 million residents and the dilemma for the GJM is that by preventing day labourers from working the strikes have a severe impact on some of the poorest members of the community.

"I feel both sympathy and anger," said Ashok Lohia, who owns several estates including the famed Chamong tea gardens. "If you want to work in the area, you have to get on with the local guys. At the same time, you don't want to lose money" because of the strikes, he said.

STEEPED IN HISTORY

* Darjeeling tea is normally made from a small-leaved Chinese variety of plant.
* Tea planting in Darjeeling began in 1841.
* An Indian Medical Service surgeon used seeds from China to begin experimental tea planting.
* The Government also established tea nurseries during the 1840s and commercial growing began a few years later.

- INDEPENDENT