Desi Daru Sales Soar in Vidarbha, Raising Alarms Across the Region

thenewsdirt
Jul 24
5 min read

The rural heartland of Vidarbha has always bought more country liquor than metropolitan Maharashtra, yet the past five years have seen a scale of growth that even seasoned excise officers call unprecedented.

Between disruptions caused by the pandemic and sweeping tax reforms, desi daru, officially classified as country liquor (CL), has outpaced every other beverage category across the region’s districts.

Recent figures reveal a clear upward curve from 2020 to 2025, a shift that is already surfacing in public-health wards, police diaries and revenue ledgers.

Escalating Sales Patterns

State excise records show that CL volumes were hit sharply during the first year of Covid-19 restrictions.

From April 2020 to January 2021, Nagpur district still managed to move more than 2 crore bulk litres, yet that total represented a 19 percent fall on the previous year. The slide proved temporary.

As travel curbs softened, consumption bounced back. Data for the first five months of 2024 put overall liquor movement in Nagpur at 2.42 crore litres, with country liquor alone accounting for 1.11 crore litres, almost half the district’s entire spirits market and 3 percent higher than the same stretch in 2023.

By the close of the 2024-25 fiscal year, Nagpur had sold a full 6 crore litres of beverage alcohol. Country liquor led the surge at 2.73 crore litres, earning the local excise office ₹820 crore in duties and fees, an annual gain of roughly ₹28 crore.

“Country liquor rose about four percent year on year, foreign liquor six percent, but beer and wine climbed fifteen percent each,” a senior excise officer said, tracing the trend to sustained factory output and recovering nightlife after successive lockdown phases.

The upward pattern is not limited to Nagpur. Chandrapur, Yavatmal, Amravati and Bhandara have reported similar rebounds, although district-level figures for 2024-25 are still being audited.

What is clear, officials say, is that desi daru remains the preferred product where disposable incomes are tight and sugarcane-based spirits stay within easy reach.

Policy and Production Factors

Several structural changes have accelerated the desi daru boom across Vidarbha. In June 2021, the Maharashtra cabinet lifted the six-year prohibition in Chandrapur district after concluding that smuggling and revenue leakage had offset any social benefits.

The return of licensed outlets instantly restored legal supply to a population of 2 million, pulling clandestine sales into the tax net.

Excise duty reforms have added fresh momentum. From April 2024, country liquor attracted ₹180 per proof litre; in June 2025, the rate was pushed to ₹205. Although intended to bolster the state’s finances by an additional ₹14,000 crore a year, the hike was cushioned by parallel increases on branded IMFL, leaving CL relatively affordable.

A new “Maharashtra Made Liquor” (MML) band, priced between CL and IMFL, is expected to draw further interest toward grain-based spirits bottled within the state.

On the supply side, sugar-mill distilleries across western and central Maharashtra ramped up country-liquor output when ethanol production paused in 2023-24.

Vasantdada Sugar Institute’s audit found that six co-operative mills produced 1,34,800 lakh cases of CL in 2023-24, a year-on-year leap of 234 percent. Reduced ethanol incentives, combined with the run-up to last year’s general elections, nudged millers toward the more profitable route of bottling desi daru.

All of this means more product is reaching Vidarbha’s retail shelves than at any point in the past decade, helped by improved road links such as the Samruddhi expressway that now moves tankers from the western distilling belt to eastern markets in under eight hours.

Small-town retailers confirm the upswing in plain terms. “Before Covid my counter moved thirty cases a week. Now it is forty-five, sometimes fifty,” said Suresh Jaiswal, a licensed shopkeeper in Yavatmal.

He points to two drivers: the ₹80 price tag on a 180 ml CL bottle after the 2025 duty revamp, and the steady drift back to daily-wage jobs that were lost during lockdown. “People drink to mark the end of a workday. When work came back, so did sales.”

Producers echo the sentiment. A distillery manager outside Bhandara spoke on background: “Our unit ran at 50 percent capacity in 2020. Today we are over 80 percent, largely on CL lines. Ethanol used to anchor cash flow, but policy remains uncertain. Country liquor offers a reliable margin.”

Excise inspectors, meanwhile, record a different pulse. One official in Amravati district notes that election cycles amplify demand in rural pockets. “Every campaign trail triggers a spike. Truck consignments to outlying tehsils double overnight.” The same officer concedes that policing adulteration has become harder as volumes climb.

Paramedics at a primary health centre near Wardha share the human fallout. “We admit at least two cases a week of suspected methanol poisoning,” said Dr. Shweta Deshpande. “Victims usually bought cheap sachets on the highway. The fatal dose is tiny and symptoms progress quickly.”

Social and Health Costs

Economic revival masks a set of troubling side-effects. In April 2021, seven labourers in Yavatmal district died after drinking hand sanitiser when liquor outlets closed for a weekend virus lockdown.

The coroner ruled high methanol toxicity. Families of the deceased stated that desi daru was the usual drink but had been unavailable on short notice. The episode underlined both dependence and risk: when regular supply falters, consumers reach for unsafe alternatives.

Alcohol-related ailments are on the rise too.

A four-year survey by the Rashtrasant Tukdoji Cancer Hospital in Nagpur found alcohol and tobacco to be significant co-factors in oral and oesophageal cancers, two of the most common malignancies among Vidarbha men. Doctors cite early initiation and low prices as core contributors.

Domestic-violence helplines in Chandrapur registered a 17 percent increase in calls between March 2023 and February 2025, with counsellors often noting alcohol as a precipitating factor. Rural loan-recovery agents around Yavatmal say overdue farm instalments tend to peak after festival seasons, mirroring periods of heavy liquor purchase.

Superintendent of Police R. S. Munde attributes a rise in petty crime, particularly motorcycle theft, to quick cash needs for liquor. “Offenders tell us they sell a stolen bike for three or four thousand rupees, enough for a few weeks of country liquor,” he said.

The cumulative effect is felt in local budgets. Chandrapur’s district hospital spent an additional ₹1.8 crore on gastroenterology admissions in 2024-25, a figure medical administrators link directly to acute alcohol cases. Nagpur’s excise earnings may be up, yet municipal health offices warn that treatment costs are climbing in tandem.

The trajectory of desi daru sales across Vidarbha shows no sign of easing. Producers have scaled capacity, road and rail corridors move consignments faster than ever, and consumers remain price-sensitive in a region where per-capita income trails the state average.

Interviews with retailers, law enforcement and medical staff converge on one insight: rising availability has made strong spirits an everyday commodity rather than a festival luxury.