Capítulo 3. Diseño del hardware y selección del software del banco de pruebas
3.5 Acondicionamiento de señal de los sensores
3.5.2 Sensor de presión
My first visit to Darjeeling in 2001(as a tourist) involved inadvertently arriving in the town on the eve of a planned strike. This resulted in spending approximately five days holed up in a guesthouse (one of the few places open for business), while political tensions ratcheted up through the town, culminating in a midnight armed police-escorted flee back down the mountain road to the safety of the city of Siliguri.
This was in fact a good introduction to the political troubles that have plagued Darjeeling since the mid-1980s, and which have only recently started to abate.
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Illustration 4: Darjeeling town
At an altitude of 7,000ft, Darjeeling is a growing town situated over steep hillside in the northern part of the state of West Bengal in northeast India, bordered on three sides by mountains. It is situated between the state of Sikkim (with its contested border with China) to the north, Nepal to the west and Bhutan beyond the mountains in the east. To the south lie the plains of West Bengal, with Siliguri the nearest large (and rapidly expanding) city three to four hours’ drive away. On the outskirts of Siliguri lie Darjeeling’s nearest train station (other than the toy train which travels very slowly up the mountain) at New Jalpaiguri and airport at Bagdogra.
Darjeeling’s climate sees bitterly cold winters (which I mostly managed to avoid) and an annual three-month monsoon from mid-June to mid-September. During this time it rains daily, the seemingly endless damp and fog hanging in the air and
permeating everything. Moreover, Darjeeling’s lack of infrastructure exacerbates the effects of the weather, where unpaved earth roads become mud pits for weeks at a time, and blocked drains are washed over by torrents of rain. Travel becomes difficult and dangerous during this time of year, and locals frequently advised me against taking any long trips into Sikkim during the monsoon (advice I was happy to heed, having heard frequent reports of mudslides). However, despite such
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inconveniences, Darjeeling’s temperate climate – which attracts both foreign and Indian tourists, especially during the hot season – is a pleasant and welcome relief from the heat of the Indian plains. In addition, the occasional glimpse of the snow-capped mountain top of Kanchenjunga or the other mountains that surround the Darjeeling Hills and laid-back, friendly atmosphere of the town make it a pleasant and relaxing place to stay.
In the 1990s, the population of Darjeeling was said to be 60,000 (Jacobson 2000, p.
250); by the 2001 census, its population was numbered at 106,257 (Gerke 2012a, p.
39). However, such figures are often rather unreliable low estimates which exclude villages (Gerke 2012a, p. 39) and, in reality, Darjeeling’s boundaries are ‘indefinite’, making it difficult to get any kind of accurate statistics (Jacobson 2000, p. 250).
Situated in the Singalila mountain range in the eastern Himalayas (Dasgupta 1999, p.
47), contemporary Darjeeling is ‘the hub of transportation, education, governmental administration, telecommunications, and health care for the entire region of the West Bengal Hills’ (Jacobson 2000, p. 252). One of its main economies, the tea trade, is illustrated by the tea-covered hills and valleys expanding out of town in every direction and the numerous tea shops dotted around the area. In addition, the large number of hotels and guesthouses – offering a full range of options from the very basic to very luxurious – indicates a tourism trade which thrives despite the political problems which have dogged Darjeeling over the past three decades. Restaurants, souvenir shops and market stalls, selling everything from jewellery, clothes and traditionally-crafted items to high- (and low-)end tea attest to this significant part of the local economy too. It is a popular destination for Indian tourists, and to a lesser extent, foreign tourists. As a result, the summers find huge numbers of visitors crowding the market stall-lined streets, as Bengalis particularly make the trip north to escape the heat of the plains.
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Illustration 5: Tea plantation workers in Arya Tea Garden, Darjeeling It was Darjeeling’s temperate climate which also attracted the British during the colonial era, leading to its development as a hill station, and its becoming one of India’s ‘largest and most popular British retreats’ (Jacobson 2000, p. 244). The construction of Hill Cart Road, the main road into Darjeeling from the plains to the south, was completed in 1866, and was followed by a construction boom, as buildings including churches, schools, hospitals and missionary schools were built (Dasgupta 1999, p. 51). Many of these schools remain popular and highly-regarded, drawing students from across India and even southeast Asia in addition to local students.
In terms of its population, prior to the British annexation of parts of the region from Sikkim (at that time an independent Tibetan Buddhist state), the Darjeeling hills were rather ‘sparsely populated’ by Lepcha (who claim to be the indigenous inhabitants of the region), Bhutia, Limbu and Magar; with Nepali Buddhist groups, such as the Yolmo, Tamang and Sherpa – ‘some of whom have close resemblance to Tibetans’ – resident in the area for ‘several centuries’ (Gerke 2012a, pp. 46-50).
Nepali migrant workers started to arrive in the Darjeeling region from the early nineteenth century onwards, leading to a ‘Nepalisation’ of the region and today the
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majority of the contemporary population is made up of ethnic groups ‘originating in Nepal’, such as the Gurung, Rai and Newar and, whilst Nepali immigrants continue to arrive in the area, the majority of Nepalis in the region are now Indian citizens (Gerke 2012a, pp. 49-50). In addition, members of numerous Indian social castes who have come to the area for trading and business purposes reside in and around the town.
It is this ‘Nepalisation’ described by Gerke that has led to Darjeeling’s long-running political problems, which have only recently calmed down. The past few decades have witnessed an often violent campaign for independence from West Bengal, as the resident Nepalis call for an independent state of ‘Gorkhaland’ – a demand which reaches back to 1906 (Gerke 2012a, p. 51).2 This campaign has resulted in violence and disruption in the area: the mid-1980s were marked by strikes – during which everything, including businesses and schools, closed – and violence, particularly during the ‘agitation’ which lasted from 1986 to 1988. This period saw hundreds of deaths and injuries, the destruction of houses, government buildings and vehicles, and significant disruption to the three main local economies of tea, tourism and timber (Dasgupta 1999, pp. 65-6). However, even after the agitation officially ended in 1988, acrimony continued, amid claims that significant economic development had been impossible due to state obstructions (Sonntag 2003, p. 190). Heavy protests, assassinations, indefinite strikes, interparty violence, and attacks on government offices continued (Middleton, 2013, p. 618), and in 2010 a prominent Gorkha politician was violently attacked and killed in the centre of town.3 Certainly, a lack of investment in infrastructure in Darjeeling was obvious during my time there – particularly when compared to nearby Siliguri. Strikes and violence had left the town with limited growth and employment prospects and a damaged tourist industry, and an almost non-existent evening social scene, where everything except perhaps a handful of bars closed by 9pm every night. In addition, power cuts (some scheduled
2 There are a number of precedents for this, such as a similar campaign in 2000 which was successful in achieving statehood for Uttarakhand, separating it from the state of Uttar Pradesh, within which it had previously been included.
3 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gorkha-leader-Madan-Tamang-hacked-in-public/articleshow/5960365.cms [accessed: 25th May 2014].
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as ‘load shedding’ off the supply, others unexpected) were frequent, and many of the town’s unpaved roads turned to impassable mud during the annual monsoon, as the rain washed away the ground, exposing pipes and cables and thus damaging the water and electricity supply further. Whilst I was in Darjeeling in July 2011, national newspapers reported that the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) – would replace the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, with ‘[a]ll major differences... put to rest’.4 Nevertheless, whilst Darjeeling no longer experienced the kind of violence seen in the 1980s, intermittent strikes continued, causing disruption to businesses and schools in the area.