Sober turn

Sandwiched between a reservoir and a hillock, Bethathallapalli, 8216;a black spot8217; on Tamil Nadu8217;s map, is churning a revolution of sorts. Nearly all the 200 families in the village had known only one livelihood8212;brewing arrack. Today, most of the village women, rustic arrack peddlers until just two months ago, have turned a new leaf. They have also threatened to walk out on their husbands if they didn8217;t give up bootlegging too.

The festivities are in full swing in the village in front of a small Kali temple at the foot of a rugged hillock. Mangamma Venkatesh, 30, is busy, helping with cooking as well as getting ready trays with flowers, fruits and new clothes which would be placed before the deity.

Earlier, a can of arrack would have been part of the offering to the god. For the first time, this was missing too. Just two months ago, Mangamma had little time for anything else but brewing arrack, nervously hiding behind huge boulders on the hillock, which provided an effective cover from prying eyes8212;those of the district police.

8216;8216;We used to earn as much as Rs 10,000 a month,8217;8217; says Mangamma. The festivities would have cost her at least Rs 20,000 but she has saved up a decent amount from the arrack trade, which she and her husband had successfully run. 8216;8216;We were very comfortable with earnings from brewing arrack made of jaggery and barks of a tree and sold for Rs 10 a glass. But we are tired of hiding from the police all the time,8217;8217; she says.

Venkatesh had been reluctant to give up the illegal trade, the only means of livelihood he had known since he was eight. His father, and before that his grandfather, had all been in the trade. But Mangamma threatened to leave him.

Similar was the case with Thanamma Nataraj, whose husband now runs a shop in the village and several other women in the village, who even threatened to pluck their 8216;thalis mangalsutras8217; off their neck if their husbands went back to brewing arrack.

The arrack-hardened Bethathallapalli women did not have a change of heart one sudden morning. The change came slow and it had much to do with the Krishnagiri District Collector, Santosh Babu, posted to the district in June. On August 23 this year, armed with the experience of ridding arrack from a hamlet in Sivagangai district in the heart of Tamil Nadu, the collector took his entire team, including the Superintendent of Police, Revenue Divisional Officer and a host of other district officials and landed in Bethathallapalli, six kilometres from Krishnagiri town. The collector spoke to the villagers at a camp and the effort was followed up by a few voluntary agencies.

8216;8216;I believe any human being can be changed through motivation and persuasion,8217;8217; says Santosh Babu. The results were amazing. The villagers left their niches on the hillock and came down to to their homes. Today, it is difficult to find men and women in the villages during the day. They are busy working as daily wage labourers in fields, on constructions sites, forests, foraging for wood.

A board in Tamil at the village entrance reads, 8216;8217;We proudly proclaim that this is a village that has totally rid arrack.8217;8217; And that says it all.

The women helped by using subtle threats of divorce with their reluctant husbands. But they also complained to the district SP that if four houses involved in the arrack brewing had become forty over the years, the police were to be blamed. 8216;8216;With pressure from the police for mamool, we could never hope of giving up the trade,8217;8217; points out Mangamma.

8216;8216;They still have their earnings from the arrack trade left. But how long will these earnings last? The district administration has to do something fast, otherwise we will go back to the trade with vigour and this time it would be extremely difficult to bring us back,8217;8217; warns 22-year-old Murugan Munraj.

8216;8216;We are working out ways to organise loans for villagers for setting up cottage industries and buying milch cows. I am also trying to identify wasteland to distribute among the landless according to the government8217;s scheme of two acres per landless. But all this will take time,8217;8217; the collector points out.

Bethathallpalli remains on a precarious brink. The vessels in which arrack was brewed still lie scattered on the hillock and the dead embers can be seen even today behind the massive pebbles.8216;8216;If the district administration does not help us with an alternate livelihood, we have no other option but to go back to brewing arrack again,8217;8217; warns Mangamma.