Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal invented a novel way to pay two million tea garden laborers who are paid in cash.  A week  after demonetization, he approached the Finance Ministry to provide him the cash since banks were closed. The FinMin expressed its inability to help him out. So Sonowal asked tea garden owners to instruct their banks to transfer the wages into the National Disaster Relief Fund. From there, the money was subsequently transferred to the offices of the district collectors who distributed the same among laborers.