How the collapse of farming in Kalimpong has given rise to the ‘homestay’ tourist economy

“Farming isn’t what it used to be.” That’s what people across Kalimpong told me when I was there in summer 2022 after a Covid-induced fieldwork hiatus. Something had shifted. In the before-times, people were quick to valorise farming as the thing that distinguished Kalimpong, a district of West Bengal in the Himalayan foothills.

Farming, and tenurial rights to land, gave the Nepalis and indigenous Lepchas and Bhutias who call Kalimpong home a different political consciousness. They also told me that Kalimpong had higher literacy rates and that people there were healthier than in Darjeeling, the tea plantation district on the other side of the Teesta River.

This is not to say that farming, and belonging more generally, have not always been tenuous in Kalimpong. But something seemed different. Over a short span of years, the livability of the region – particularly in the villages – started to become doubtful.

Many Kalimpong farmers have stopped farming their land. The cost of production, particularly for rice, has risen above market value. They explained that not only was there no market, there was no water for agriculture. More and more villagers, especially the youth, were migrating to India’s cities or abroad in search of work in...

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