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With the British annexation of densely forested sub-Himalayan tracts in the 19th-century following consecutive conflicts with Burma, the Gorkhas and Bhutan, preliminary assessment was made of which forest lands were suited for commercial forestry. Other miscellaneous tracts considered unsuited for commercial forestry were reclassified as 'jungle', i.e. as wastelands incapable of yielding land revenue from being farmed out in agricultural leases to individual farmers. In Bengal and Assam, these wastelands were subsequently cleared for laying out commercial plantations. The sub-Himalayan foothills in Bengal were deforested to yield way for economically valuable plantations of tea. This cycle of deforestation and replantation of forests was accelerated by adoption of the 'Taungya' system of shifting forest villages, feeding into the disputes over forest rights that are seen today (Ghosal & Ghosh, 2019). From thence onwards, extensive deforestation accompanied the expansion of tea acreages, driving the subsequent growth of population and markets (Prokop, 2018). Consequently, the conditions of labour in plantation and forest work have been interdependent, since their workers are drawn from a common labour pool that is subject to the maximum rural poverty and deprivation. These are reflected today in the persistence of identical inequalities in the delivery of social services like healthcare and education to the isolated communities of these workers and their families. Although the forests that are maintained by these workers as forest reserves have played a crucial role in regional conservation efforts, the sustained indifference adopted by the government towards the needs of these poor communities reflects the perpetuation of colonial attitudes, disdaining and neglecting the needs of the rural poor. The research study will evaluate the critical labour welfare markers seen in the plantation history of Darjeeling, tracing out the emergence of health, housing and educational inequalities, as well as the urgency of broadening welfare access.