Siliguri, Feb. 28: Squinting his eyes in the sun, Vincent Oraon points to what’s left of the tea bushes at Chandmoni.

“You see they were all uprooted. We had seen the bushes grow but they are now all gone,” the Chandmoni Cha Bagan Mazdoor Morcha leader says with a sigh.

The midday sun baked the 404-acre tea estate on the outskirts of Siliguri, now poised to become an upmarket township. Good news for builders and residents of the rambling trading town, seeking space and a breath of fresh air.

But with the tea bushes, the glimmer of hope flickering in the eyes of the labourers is gone. To them, the tea garden means livelihood and more. “This is where I grew up. My parents worked here and now my husband does. It’s our home,” Sunita Buxla, wife of a labourer, said, her voice choking.

With policemen standing guard, their guns ready, the Darjeeling district administration oversaw with an eagle eye the uprooting of the bushes, which started on February 1 and ended yesterday. For all administrative apprehensions, the work had completed unopposed, almost unnoticed.

With the ruling CPM backing the administration to the hilt — it’s said to be the pet project of municipal affairs minister Asok Bhattacharya — very few voices rose in protest. And the voices of the workers, virtually abandoned by all the major political parties except the RSP, were too feeble to waft out of the garden.With the writing on the wall clear as daylight, Oraon has stopped counting on anyone but god. “The God cannot be so cruel. He won’t take away everything from us.”

The workers still cannot fathom how their world has turned upside down in the last one year. When the administration tried to pluck the tea bushes for the first time last June, workers erupted in fury. Police opened fire, killing two labourers.

But that was last June. Much had changed since. Not a peep was heard from the demoralised workers when the uprooting started on February 1. Some Naxalite groups made a noise and even organised a general strike in Siliguri. But that was that. The bushes were plucked with absolutely no resistance.

As the administration gloated over the “victory,” the workers said they have been left to fend for themselves. The government has yet to announce a rehabilitation package for 128 permanent and 350 casual workers. “All we have got from the government is pledges in abundance, but nothing else,” Rambahadur, a worker, said.

With the threat of displacement — the garden being home to them for years — looming over, the labourers wonder what to do. “Who will give us jobs and a place to stay when the tea gardens are closing down one after another,” Jeet Bahan, another worker, said.