It's business as usual at the Halmira tea estate, tucked in Golaghat district of Assam, about 300 km away from Guwahati. From the first look, no one would understand that only a month ago, this tea garden was the epicentre of a massive tragedy. 160 people, mostly workers of tea gardens, had died in Golaghat and adjoining Jorhat district after consuming spurious liquor, 47 of them from Halmira. Over 100 tea garden workers from this garden were hospitalised, and work was badly affected.
Life and work have limped back to normalcy. For the tea garden workers, poverty is too enormous a problem for grief to be a priority. They are the most marginalised, but whenever Assam votes, the six million tea garden voters, locally known as tea tribe from the 825 tea gardens in Assam, will hold the key. They directly decide results in at least four out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in Assam. Thus, at Halmira, the buzz is more about the election than the dance of death that the area saw only last month.
“I have lost my husband to the hooch tragedy. But I cannot give up work out of grief. No tea garden worker can give up work. We are marginalised. So even in grief, we work. We really want the politicians to make illegal liquor a poll issue and make a promise that it will be banned,” said Ganga Moni Ghatowar, a tea garden worker at Halmira. Her husband Dilip Orang was a permanent worker in the garden.