About 40km from Shillong at an altitude of 4,800ft, the sleepy hamlet of Mawlyngot is about a century and a half old. Locals say people from the India-Bangladesh border migrated down the river Umsong and settled on the hills. Early inhabitants thrived on smallscale cultivation of yam, corn, millet, potato, chilli and banana but with lower yields and absence of policing, they turned to the easy-to-brew country liquor 'pyrsi' made from rice and millet.
Mawlyngot's brewery soon became reason for the community's steady collapse — broken homes, chronic illnesses, drunken brawls and penury. "As a landless villager with no education, brewing pyrsi was an easy way to earn money. You can't escape addiction when you're brewing alcohol all day. I would often get into fights on the streets," says Phroshon Songthiang, 39. Phroshan is now a changed man who manages the community-run tea processing unit.
Read more of this changover in a report by Mohua Das published in Times of India....
