Struggle for survival after hill strike...... Tea workers risks life in fetching wild mushrooms

Prashant Acharya, EOI, SILIGURI, 20 Aug 2017: The closure of the tea garden and affect after the hill strike this elderly woman take risk of wild animals and recognising poisonous mushrooms to fetch in the nearby jungle of Panighatta under Mirik.

Panighatta tea garden was shut down on October 10, 2015 and now the workers are baddly hit by the ongoing movement in hills for separate state.

Sixty years old Margene Toppo enters Panighatta forest early morning everyday to find nutritious Mushrooms that grows in large numbers during monsoon season.

Despite of risk of attacking wild animals including leopards, elephants and jackals Toppo enters the forest to collect mushroom so that their family members can get food for one time.

She said, “We are in trouble after the closure of the tea garden but the condition became worse due to the ongoing movement in the hills, we are managing food somehow till now but no idea about future if it continuous for more days.”

She says several other workers also go to the nearby jungle to find wild food and fishes from the streams.

For the survival these tribal woman sometimes fall in trouble in wrong recognising poisonous mushrooms which can only be recognised by experts.

Local resident Deepak Sharma said, “There are various species of mushroom which are edible and non edible. If by mistake it is consumed people can lose their precious life.

According to experts many species are safe to eat, and some are delicious. But there are some others that can make you extremely ill, and a few are lethal. The standard taste test for identifying toxic plants doesn’t work on fungi either because they’re not actually plants they’re a separate class of living thing, neither plant nor animal. The only way to tell if a fungus is a safe mushroom or a poisonous toadstool is to identify its species by looking at it. Get it wrong and you can have a real problem – there’s no treatment or antidote for some toxic fungi.