From cheers to tears

The itch for intoxication is as old as mankind, older probably than even monkeykind, though I am yet to encounter a tipsy ape. In the Indian context, while drink has been a fact of life and subject of debate since time immemorial, the liquor regime that we witness today, both in State policy as well as in social mores, is largely a colonial import. When the British opened the first liquor shop, marking the launch of the trade as an organised, legitimate corporate activity, it was resented as an oppressor’s exploitative assault on the enslaved. But today, in free India, the closure of a liquor shop will likely be deemed as a violation of human rights, a kudimagan’s natural birthright!

If there is anything that will leave you dizzier than a couple of pegs, it is the country’s Prohibition policies. ‘The State shall endeavour to bring about the prohibition of the consumption of intoxicating drinks’, proclaims the Constitution quite piously. Now, sample this 2001 policy note of the Prohibition and Excise department of the TN government: ‘In the present context, it is not appropriate either to adopt a policy of total prohibition or to relax the existing prohibition policy as this will lead to the loss of revenue to the Government’. The policy note of 2006 says: ‘…the Government is conscious of the fact that it cannot ignore the revenue from the sale of liquor by imposing suitable rates of duties and taxes on liquor’. The slide from the pompous Constitutional pronouncements to practical fiscal polemics was not, however, a straight line; the policy flip-flops over the last six decades were more akin to a drunken swagger swinging between extremes from total prohibition to none. Indeed, it is wrong to call it the ‘Prohibition policy’ any longer as Prohibition has ceased to be an issue. ‘Liquor policy’ would be more apt as that is what is being promoted. The Welfare State wears its profitable TASMAC like a proud talisman!

Or maybe ‘Prohibition’ is still relevant in a perverse way. When Governments today talk of prohibition it is not in terms of liquor, but illicit liquor. The reigning official line is that only illicit liquor is bad, liquor is not. Back to the policy note: ‘The Prohibition Policy of Tamil Nadu is formulated keeping in tune with the changing circumstances in the course of time …’. And, pray, what is that change? Has WHO declared liquor as a health drink, safe for the thirsting multitudes of the developing world, who consume it not as a casual social courtesy like most Westerners, but as a staple diet and a fatal addiction? According to a Tamil saying, a drunkard’s word is gone by dawn but that fraternity seems to have guided the Government’s policy making. Now we know why the policy has been so wavery! So while the drunkard’s right is paramout, he being a consistent contributor to revenue, his family and sundry other victims hardly have a say, and must remain content at the ‘receiving’ end.

Quoting societal acceptance of a patent vice to frustrate Constitutional intent is most tragic. Sure, there are umpteen Constitutional injuncts that need to be revisited or even dumped, but prohibition is certainly not one of them. But even more ludicrous are the alibis touted for not enforcing prohibition. So, the Government needs the liquor taxes to sustain its various schemes, welfare and developmental. How come Gujarat, with over six decades of abstinence from liquor money is topping the industrial charts? For twenty-three years after Independence, TN was dry. And all good things, welfare and developmental, happened only in those two decades. But a wet TN, post the lifting of prohibition by K in 1970, is mired in an economic mess, despite the liquor bounty. With rampant populism depleting its treasury, the State’s fiscal addiction to the bottle has only got stronger. And that’s what the bottle does to you! When it is there nothing else counts. But kick it and you may die of craving!

But the most farcical excuse for scrapping prohibition is hooch. The standard official rationale is that prohibition encourages illicit liquor as the incurable addicts are wont to find their succour somehow. Opening the floodgates, it is argued, leads to safe drinking! But the reality, confirmed by several studies, is that unhindered availability of liquor only increases the tippler population, making non-drinkers drinkers and converting casual drinkers into addicts. The drinking community is consciously expanded on the pretext of protecting a misguided few! Result is, the demand always outstrips supply, keeping the hooch industry alive and ‘kicking’. Now, why not the Government itself start hooch outlets so that the starved underdog, who cannot afford IMFL, can die of ‘safer’ methanol? But if indeed, prohibition encourages illicit liquor (IL), how many hooch deaths have we seen in dry Gujarat? Even in TN, there were less hooch deaths in the fifties and sixties when prohibition was in force. They zoomed after 1970.

Clearly there are bigger vested interests at work than a State’s revenues or concern for a poor drunkard. Political parties thrive on liquor money while the police establishment love prohibition, full or partial, for the sleaze opportunities it offers them. From MGR to NTR to K to J, all have riled against liquor but failed to arrest its flow when in power. On the contrary, the industry has flourished with official patronage. Here in TN, many bootleggers have become barons overnight while some politicos even control breweries, through benamis, and even supply to TASMAC! And many are into hooch too. In Kerala, hooch is a cottage industry zealously supported by politicos of all hue, but primarily the Reds. Indeed, more than the habitual drunkards, any change in liquor policy would directly affect the livelihood of the political class and of course, policemen. If prohibition looks impractical and prudish today, it is largely because it has never been seriously enforced, thanks to those vested interests.

And then there is this new fad called sensible drinking.Wither sense after the second round? There are also those who claim liquor is only as bad as chocolate or potato chips! Do you lie bare, broke and bereft of dignity on the roadside after eating chocolates? Or do you feel like beating your wife to pulp after consuming potato chips, unless the chips were made by the said wife? Again, trying to distingush IMFL from IL is an official fraud. Alcohol and methanol differ only in pace, not in potency. Surely, a world sans liquor is less sinful and a lot safer. But for that to happen God will have to reboot and re-create it albeit minus politicos. For, they can mix a heady cocktail even out of plain water and thin air.

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