TS fails to provide jobs, people back to gudumba

Brewing Gudumba (illicitly distilled liquor) in the interior areas is continuing despite officials declaring district as Gudumba free long back. People affected by drought continued their traditional manufacturing of Gudumba  as a livelihood.

Many incidents of manufacturing gudumba are reported in the coal belt areas in the district and this is mainly in a village in the mandals along the river Pranahitha and the Godavari and also in coal belt areas of the western region of the Adilabad district.

The state government has failed to provide an alternative employment to the people who gave up their traditional brewing gudumba and again they have started it to make both ends meet in the drought situation. 

The local police have been conducting raids on Gudumba manufacturing units while the excise police have become inactive.

Police conducted raids in Marripelli village and also in Kalvada, Devulaguda and Lambadi Thanda villages in Dahegoan mandal recently. 

Police conducting raids regularly and destroying thousand of liters of ‘Bellampanakam’ and seizing gudumba in huge quantity, Vehicles used for transportation has become regular phenomena in the east district. Police seized Gudumba packets in their raids on gudumba manufacturing units.

It is surprising to know that police are seizing the manufacturing material from the same villages again and again and this means the villagers have not given up the brewing of gudumba despite regular raids and counseling them against brewing gudumba.       

Gudumba is being packed in sachets so that they can easily transport to the selected locations and places and it is found that women are playing an active role in transporting the Gudumba to other places in the district and to villages in bordering Maharashtra. There is a liquor prohibition in Chandrapur and Gadchiroli districts of Maharashtra bordering Adilabad.            

The traditional manufacturers of gudumba stopped brewing liquor with the state government’s promise to provide them with an alternative employment to compensate the income they lose by giving up brewing gudumba. But the state government has failed to fulfill its promise till now.

In the meanwhile, the situation has turned from bad to worse with the severe drought conditions in most of the villages.

On condition of anonymity, a woman of Marripelli in Dahegoan mandal said, what should they do to make both ends meet other than brewing Gudumba or else they will die due to starvation as there are no works under Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Rural Scheme (MGNREGS) and wages were pending for a long time and there are no crops.