Dan Singh Bisht

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Thakur Dan Singh Bisht (1906 – 10 September 1964) was a philanthropist from Kumaon, Uttarakhand, India.^[1]

At its height, his massive timber depots with attendant offices and bungalows for managers extended across the Himalayas from Lahore to Wazirabad in what later became Pakistan, Jammu to Pathankot, Kartanya Ghat and Kaurilya Ghat and C.B.Ganj Bareilly, Bihar and Tanakpur, Kathgodam and Pithoragarh and Haldwani to Goalpara and Garo Hills as well as Bardiya district and Kathmandu in Nepal. Vast properties purchased by his father and him at each location led to his immersion in local lore as a folk hero, who rode on a horse, with hands always full to give.^{[citation needed]} At its height his father's company, D. S. Bist and Sons, consisted of Dev Singh Bist, Dan Singh Bist and his younger brother, Mohan Singh Bist. DS Bist and Sons employed over 5000 people and had tens of millions of rupees in business.^{[citation needed]} but was bidding for contracts in the Andamans and even Brazil when Dan Singh Bisht met his death after completing his last purchase of Beldanga Sugar Mill^{[citation needed]} in Murshidabad. He collapsed in his suite at the Grand Hotel (Kolkata) due to health and stress caused by the anti-business pandora's box the newly independent India opened. He had recently sold the plant he had set up at a discount, sensing no solution, as the Government had refused his machinery to leave Calcutta Port despite having first authorized Dan Singh Bist to take a hefty loan to procure the same. The Bisht Industrial Corporation Ltd. which was formed by D. S. Bisht and sons of Nainital in whose favour an industrial licence was granted in 1956 to set up a sugar factory of two thousand tonnes capacity a day at Kichha to meet the 'crying need' of the cultivators, of sugar-cane in district Nainital. But after Dan Singh Bisht sold his shares in 1963, and subsequently died the next year, it did not run even for a day and was ultimately taken over by Government, by an ordinance issued on 12 September 1970 which was replaced by Bisht Industrial Corporation Limited (Acquisition of Undertaking) Act, No. 7 of 1971.^{[citation needed]}

Bisht's empire began to collapse even as he lay in hospital in a coma, dying ultimately on 10 September 1964. He had no son, and his was a patriarchal society. His daughters were children, or just married. The fate of Beldanga sugar mill is unknown, as Dan Singh Bisht fell into a coma the day after procurement and his daughters were mostly minors. The mill at Kichha is now a governmental-run mill. His prime real estate in Nainital, several architecturally significant British cottages with lake views, of several acres each such as Primrose, Cambridge Hall, and Grasmere are alienated, and as well as several bungalows and timber depots scattered across his areas of operation.

The Tea gardens of Chaukori and Berinag collapsed almost immediately or began steady descent into anarchy,^{[citation needed]} in the absence of a central intelligence, and combined with socialistic policies and inaction of the Government, Berinag became a town with a population of 25,000 inhabitants and a living breathing municipality where the tea estate used to be, as documented by the Sub-divisional Magistrate of Tehsil at Berinag, in October, 2004 in a report to the Chief Secretary and District Magistrate. and Chaukori remained in a state of neglect. The dairy farm at Chaukori shut down. The 10,000 acres (4,000 ha) fruit producing and eucalyptus tree export power house 'Dhara Farms' near Moradabad was taken by the Government under new anti-landlord rules. The history of these farms, among the biggest in India, at the time, is interesting. One Raja Gajendra Shah of Moradabad, incurred massive debts to the state, and died in 1943. Unpaid debts allowed the State to acquire these massive lands and these were then bought by Bisht for 235,000 rupees on 30 October 1945.^{[citation needed]}

Its brand was so strong that even after Dan Singh died, from 1964 till the late 1980s, Berinag tea continued to be actively sought by people who loved and remembered its kippery taste, rich red colour and taste, and 'its unique light taste and colour'. It con to run because his brother Mohan Singh Bist ran it. It collapsed only after his death in 1977.^[2]