Bandapalem in Telangana’s Suryapet district has the excellence of being fully free from the sale or consumption of alcohol for the previous seven many years. The village is situated about 130 km from Hyderabad, and the villagers proudly say that Bandapalem is a liquor-free village! The ban on tippling has been a part of life for generations and is enforced by each fines and social stress, they are saying.
If anybody drinks alcohol, they will probably be fined and punished. They may also be expelled from the village, and we take severe motion in opposition to them,” mentioned Abdul Rehman, a neighborhood resident and MBBS scholar.
When requested why there is no such thing as a wine store, he added, “I don’t know the precise cause, however alcohol gross sales have been banned right here from the start. The older residents who’ve lived right here because the begin know why the ban was imposed.”
Villagers say makes an attempt to open arrack retailers or run illicit gudumba items have been resisted collectively. “Each men and women, collectively, determined to ban alcohol in our village. We’re all small farmers. We don’t spend cash on liquor, we should not have any quarrels, and we dwell peacefully,” mentioned a neighborhood resident.
Chinna Venkateswarulu, one other resident, mentioned the custom goes again to his father’s time.“Since my father’s time, alcohol has been banned in our village. Earlier, they tried to arrange a liquor store, however we refused to permit it in our village. Later, some folks began making alcohol illegally, and we fought to cease them. All of the villagers then determined that there ought to be no alcohol in our village,” he mentioned.
Nonetheless, one other resident famous, “If somebody needs to drink, they go to a different village. Nobody sells or drinks alcohol in our village.”
With most households depending on farming, villagers state that the long-standing ban helps keep peaceable coexistence in Bandapalem, although the clear cause for the ban was not clearly defined by the locals.
