The creation of TASMAC and vesting it with a monopoly of wholesale supply of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) was widely perceived to be an innovative way of financing the state’s welfare schemes, especially MGR’s ambitious nutritious midday meal programme of July 1982, which quickly expanded to become India’s largest in terms of beneficiaries and a model for other states. Less known at the time was the stream of illicit revenues that began to flow from the favoured owners of distilleries and breweries manufacturing the liquor into a political fund
