When mahua is the only option

Lajo Devi is curious as she looks at the diary in which this reporter is noting down details. Within a few minutes her curiosity turns to fear.

“Ee sab likh ke thanwa mein debahu ka [Are you going to give all this to the police station]?” she asks in Magahi – a language spoken here in the Magadha region of Bihar. She has been talking about how brewing mahua liquor made from the flowers of the mahua tree (Madhuca longifolia var. latifolia) – her only source of income – has been helping her survive.

Although initially reluctant to admit it, the eight kilograms of jaggery rotting in two canisters in a corner of her kutcha house give her away. Seeing this reporter’s gaze wander to the canisters, she immediately covers them up with black polythene sheets. “I am only making it [liquor] to sell during Holi,” she explains quickly.

Lajo Devi’s fear and worry about brewing liquor at home is warranted. The Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, bans the manufacture, possession, distribution or consumption of liquor or intoxicants including mahua liquor. Punishment for doing so includes imprisonment, which could extend to life, and fines of Rs. 1-10 lakh.

“I make it just to survive,” she says. A landless member of the extremely marginalised Musahar community (categorised as a Scheduled Caste in Bihar), she bears the additional burden of leprosy.

The 60-year-old shows her fingers which carry wound marks, a sign of the leprosy which killed her husband Janaki Manjhi six years ago. The state government’s Bihar Shatabdi Leper Welfare Scheme provides monthly financial assistance of Rs.1,500 to leprosy patients with visible deformities. But Lajo Devi is yet to receive a single rupee. “No government officials have so far visited us to know about my deformity,” she says.

The wounds make it difficult for her to do physical labour and she has few options or opportunities to earn a living. Brewing mahua liquor has been a traditional occupation for Musahars and Lajo Devi herself has been making it for over four decades.

Standing in front of her dilapidated house she says, “I spend around 400 rupees a month on jaggery and 25 rupees on cow dung cakes,” she says. “And earn about 1,000 rupees.” Apart from this she receives Rs. 400 from the government under the state’s old age pension scheme.

“When I got married 45 years ago, my husband had leprosy. He was unable to do any work. During those days, I saw that people around me were making and selling liquor, so I also started doing it.”

Lajo Devi claims that she was arrested a couple of times by local police but the police records have no mention of her name. A few years ago, she stopped brewing liquor and tried other options including goat rearing. She’d borrowed two goats from an acquaintance who had then given birth to two kids. But in a cruel twist of fate, one day someone stole all four.

With the goats gone she turned back to mahua. “Eho bandh kar debai ta konchi kar ke khaibai [If we stop this too then what will we do to eat]?”

Names of the people and their exact location have been changed in the story to protect their identity.