Published Paper Details:

This paper critically examines fair trade policies in the context of Darjeeling tea plantations, highlighting their disjunction from the lived realities of vulnerable plantation workers. Although initiated with the intent of advancing justice and improving livelihoods, fair trade often reproduces the same exploitative patterns embedded in mainstream global trade, wherein structural inequalities persist and wealth remains unevenly distributed. Workers continue to experience conditions shaped by colonial hierarchies of authority, oppression and dependency, with limited empowerment. Instead of fostering collective strength, fair trade has in some instances deepened divisions between members and non-members of the Joint Body. While marketed globally as a mechanism of ethical consumption--appealing to consumer conscience--its benefits rarely reach the intended beneficiaries. The study argues that without addressing entrenched forms of exploitation and powerlessness, fair trade risks becoming a symbolic gesture rather than a transformative tool of ethical globalization.