S. Vijayabaskar has spent 23 years behind a TASMAC counter in Pudukkottai. He has absorbed the ordinary indignities of the trade — the abusive drunk, the 10-hour shift, an occupation nobody mentions at a wedding. But nothing in two decades prepared him for the question his Class 8 son asked recently, after a fortnight of watching television: could his father quit and drive an auto-rickshaw instead?

The boy had seen the media coverage: the FIRs, the social media vigilantes filming through shop windows, and the new Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government moving against TASMAC employees for charging ₹10 above the maximum retail price (MRP). He had imbibed how these men were being spoken about.

“They are showing us as though we are the ones looting the money,” Mr. Vijayabaskar told The Hindu. A trade union member in the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi’s (VCK) Labour Liberation Front (LLF) of two decades’ standing, he was practised in articulating grievance. But when his son asked the question, he said, he could not give a straight answer.

The ₹10 overcharge

During a campaign in 2025, TVK leader C. Joseph Vijay — now Chief Minister — sang an impromptu number at a Karur rally: “Bottle ku 10 ruba.” The line went viral and the ₹10 overcharge had entered the lexicon. Now, his government is acting on the slogan.

Customers see little cause to object. R. Anand, a regular at a Tiruchi outlet, pays at least ₹20 above the MRP per purchase — ₹10 as a bottle buy-back deposit and a further ₹10 in what he calls, plainly, commission. K. Prabhu, who drinks three beers a sitting at a Pudukkottai shop, calculates that it costs him ₹60 extra every visit. “It is nothing but loot,” he said. Last week in Mayiladuthurai, FIRs were registered against employees at three separate outlets. A half-day bandh followed, dissolving only after a peace meeting at the collectorate.

Mr. Vijayabaskar does not dispute the overcharging. “Customers have every right to ask for the MRP,” he said. “But the irregularities in TASMAC shops have made it impossible.”

The irregularities, he describes, are not aberrations. They are the operating model.

Structural issue

TASMAC reimburses shops up to ₹9,000 monthly in electricity costs. In summer, bills routinely climb ₹4,000 above that ceiling. The excess falls on the employees. The department pays landlords ₹11,000 to ₹12,000 a month for city outlets; market rents in most locations run to ₹30,000. The gap is settled through unofficial revenue. Each week, new stock arrives four times. Unloading costs approximately ₹5 per box, 250 boxes per consignment — ₹1,250 per delivery, unreimbursed. Breakage during unloading also falls on the employee. Cleaning staff are not provided; shops hire locally and pay privately. The buy-back scheme, introduced in 2025 to encourage bottle returns, requires additional staff that TASMAC has not sanctioned — paid ₹800 to ₹1,500 a month out of workers’ pockets.

R. Arul, a supervisor in Perambalur, said the unloading arithmetic was identical at his outlet. “Not a rupee is reimbursed. You absorb it or you recover it somewhere.” Bala K., a salesman in Nagapattinam, added that damaged bottles during delivery — an inevitability, not an exception — also fell entirely on the employee.

Mr. Vijayabaskar claims to have spent ₹30,000 of his own money on a freezer box. TASMAC’s had broken years earlier and was never repaired. And he is not alone.

P. Jeevanantham, a 23-year salesman and district union secretary with AITUC in Pudukkottai, described the penalty structure with barely concealed disbelief. Under TASMAC’s own departmental guidelines, an employee who charges between ₹1 and ₹9 above MRP faces a ₹9,000 fine — a financial punishment. Charge ₹10 or more, the consequence is merely a transfer to another shop. “Effectively,” he said, “almost no punishment.”

No room for welfare

Mr. Jeevanantham listed what long service leaves behind — varicose veins, haemorrhoids, alcohol-related complications — none covered under any departmental welfare provision. Men on ten-hour shifts, six days a week, eight days of annual leave, he said.

N. Periyasamy, former MLA and State president of the Tamil Nadu TASMAC Employees Union, said the ₹10 charge has existed since November 2003 — across every government since. “It is corruption,” he said. “But the structure of TASMAC created it.” He offered a comparison: a TNSTC bus conductor collects fares but does not buy diesel or fix the engine. TASMAC employees purchase their own padlocks, hire their own cleaners, absorb their own losses — in a department that has revised pay 15 times without addressing a single one of these informalities.

The wages tell their own story. A supervisor takes home ₹14,740; a salesman, ₹12,476 — against unofficial outgoings running to thousands monthly. In 2003, TASMAC had 34,000 employees and ₹3,000 crore in sales. Today: 25,000 staff, ₹50,000 crore in revenues — a workforce cut by a quarter, turnover up 17-fold, and every worker still on contract after two decades.

A senior State-level TASMAC official, speaking without attribution, said the department had briefed the new government comprehensively and expected reforms to follow. “The department has no plan to demoralise its working staff,” he said. “They are our core assets.”