The ongoing Chinjak festival at Iboyaima Shumang Leela Shanglen threw in a surprise with the hosting of an unusually enlightening panel discussion on the indispensability of local brew, atingba, first due to its usage in traditional methods of treatment of diseases and secondly through its abuse as an intoxicant in modern times. By design or mere co-incidence, the composition of the panel on the first day was wholly made up of women activists.
Shifting from the actual event and moving on to more general facts, yu or local alcohol had been recorded to have been used in offerings, medicinal potions and as a relaxant. Due to its property as a strong solvent for many active constituents of medicinal plants, it had an important role in traditional medicine. Local healers prescribed them for treatment of wide ranging health issues from common cold, body-ache to infertility. The smearing of alcohol on the face and body as a beauty care product was also popular among certain sections.
On the other hand, a lingering debate on benefits of the prohibition of alcohol ensued from the very first day of its imposition by the state government in 1991.
To any commentator with remote experience of the local anti-alcohol movement there was never any anticipation that the government’s prohibition will lead to banishment of alcohol. Neither was there any simultaneous belief that the ban will erase the vices and indecency that in all probability egged the caretakers of the community to knuckle down.
On the contrary, the realities of prohibition have proven to be quite the opposite. Illicit liquor houses have flourished and liquor flowed finding their way into each and every locality. Women operated the vendors, not always but many times with the perceptive and often successful agenda of luring patrons, many of them young men. The numbers of distilleries have not come down, to put it very mildly. At the same time, the restrictions have forced the hardworking common man with the inherent desire to drink something pretty strong before dinner, satisfy their urges with illicit rot-gut, day after day.
Drunkenness is a chief factor for criminal activity and several immoral activities without doubt have alcoholic origin. But, it will be the height of irresponsibility if we ignore the inability of the law enforcement to eradicate the thriving bootlegging business and wide sale of spurious liquor during the last two decades. In fact, the expansiveness and vigor of the illicit liquor trade in Manipur makes it hard to suppress the suspicious thoughts about the involvement of highly-placed and influential people and them enjoying a profitable nexus with distillery owners and suppliers.
Moreover, how many decades of the proper education on anti-alcoholism being undertaken by several committed organizations will be needed to make the Manipuris suppressed the perceived obsession for fermented and distilled drinks.
Time after time we have been forced to contemplate the rationality of the strong argument of legislature P Brojen given in favour of hygienic and standard distillation of alcohol and the impracticability of the prohibition during a debate at the House. Look at the faces of the 60-year olds in the state, he was quoted as saying, …due to (unhygienically produced) alcohol related ailments, hospitals have become the biggest industry (in Manipur).