National

The Hunt For The Last Tipple

A month on, Nitish Kumar’s push for an alcohol-free state remains a case of ‘you win some, you lose some’

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The Hunt For The Last Tipple
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It’s 10 pm on a Sunday and Patna’s usually busy Fraser Road bears a deserted look. Life has visibly changed in the one month since Bihar chief minister Nitesh Kumar prohibited consumption and sales of liquor—both country-made and Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL). The city sleeps early these days; it no longer gives the feeling of being alw­ays on the move. A bagger, with scraggly beard and heat-burned face, is smoking a chillum. Nearby some lab­ourers are in languid stupor. “I haven’t slept well for a month,” says one of them, Ramu from Samastipur, 30. “After a hard day’s toil in the scorching sun, daaru (liquor) is a must to soothe the nerves. I can’t sleep and have cramps all night.” The desperate ones take risks to lay their hands on smuggled liquor. It’s a status symbol to drink during prohibition.

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These are early days, though, and it’s clear that Nitish means business. The bars have shut down. Mahesh Kumar, 50, is a security guard at the famous Mamta Bar. “How much do guards get paid in Delhi?” he asks. The premium hotels—Patliputra, The Panache or Chanakya—are almost empty. Locals don’t seem to like dining without wining; sales have plummeted.  

The worst affected are the elite clubs of Patna. Take Bankipur Club, for instance, which was founded 150 years ago by the British and where the rich and influential now congregate. Until a month back, the bar room used to be full every evening; some 300 members came daily, on an average, and double as many on weekends. This, too, is a Sunday evening but only two tables are occupied. A sad scene overall: lemonade served on the rocks, no animated conversations, no takers even for the IPL match being shown on a giant screen in the garden.

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The lack of cheer in the bar room is matched by a happy turn to the accident-and-crime stats: 2,328 FIRs were filed in Bihar this April compared to 3,178 for the same period in 2015. Marriage processions arrive on time; there are no scuffles among tipsy relatives, there’s no firing of guns in the air.

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Waterways

Boats like this one are used to smuggle liquor

Photograph by Mihir Srivastava

This disciplining of the populace, obviously, takes quite a lot of effort. In Patna alone, 1,900-odd policemen, inc­luding home guards, man the streets looking out for those violating the booze ban. Besides the police, the hospitals too are running busy. Since prohibition was imposed, 180 alcoholics and drug users have been treated at the newly created de-addiction wing of the Patna Medical College. They lie on the bed in a daze, as if asleep with their eyes open. Wife and relatives huddle together on the same bed. The wives say they are happy that alcohol is out but fear that the alternative may be worse. “They will smoke ganja or eat bhang, if not drink mahua,” one of them complains, pointing out that there has been a surge in the supply of bhang in the market.

“The patients we treat are those who suffer from withdrawal symptoms, inc­luding hallucinations and sleeplessness,” Dr Peeyush Kumar, the medical officer on duty explains. Only serious cases are admitted and the rest sent back after counselling. There is a shortage of de-addition drugs but no medical officer wants to admit it on record for fear of persecution.

Just as busy as the cops and the docs are the bootleggers, who have been gifted a windfall with the prohibition. The sale of liquor having gone underground, the prices have shot through the roof. A bottle of beer, for example, is available for Rs 1,000 rupees (Rs 200 extra if you want it chilled).

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Nitish hogs the headlines every day in the local papers, sermonising on the benefits of prohibition. He is, of course, wooing the women voters with this while panchayat elections are being held in Bihar. But he also has an eye on the top job in New Delhi and wants to extend prohibition to the rest of the country.

There is some irony in that ambition, though. In 2006, it was his government that set up the supply chain of liquor across the state, particularly in the villages. The Bihar State Beverage Corporation was created for this. At that time Nitish had argued that the move was meant to “fill the coffers”, recalls his one-time colleague and now detractor, former chief minister Jiten Ram Manjhi. Indeed, liquor excise revenue increased tenfold in the past 10 years, crossing Rs 4,000 crore per annum. Calling Nitish’s prohibition as a “drama”, Manjhi says, “Those who used to drink before prohibition continue to drink, albeit in private.”  

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Seek & Destroy

Country-made liquor bottles being crushed in Patna

Photograph by Manoj Sinha

From filling the coffers with liquor revenue, the state government’s focus has now shifted to enforcing prohibition, ignoring the loss of revenue. With 20 of Bihar’s 38 districts sharing a border with Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal or Nepal, recent seizures suggest that alcohol is being smuggled in from across the inter-state and international borders. By last week, 611 places had been raided, 77 cases registered and 240 litres of IMFL and much more country-made booze confiscated. Pedestrians are being given breathalyser tests. The villagers have never seen such a gadget and they describe it as a device with magical powers, procured from a foreign country, which can identify a drunk in a crowd of a million. Current and former defence personnel who are entitled to liquor from army canteens have been told to drink inside the cantonment area.

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Informants are the new vigilantes. Last week, some businessmen were arrested from hotels in Patna. They were partying in a room and someone informed the police. They claimed that they thought prohibition only app­lied to public places. But prohibition is applicable even in the privacy of your home. It means the police can actually march into your bedroom if someone complains that you have been drinking. Professor Vinay Kumar Kanth of Patna University, who is also associated with PUCL and was part of a team that investigated a case of death caused by consumption of spurious liquor, minces no words, “I am not challenging prohibition but the intent. The government is acting like the Sangh parivar.” For Kanth, the right to privacy is sacrosanct and prohibition just another tool in the hands of the State to harass the people.

Besides roads, boats are also used to smuggle in liquor. This reporter took an old wooden boat to reach the villages of Nakata and Manas across the Ganga from Dhigha Ghat. The villages seem straight out of medieval times with dusty terrain, crumbling mud-dwellings, scattered vegetable farms, pools of dirty water, semi-naked children running around and people defecating in the open along the banks. Poverty forces them to skin their own cattle for leather and throw the carcass into the river. The booze ban had brought great desperation to many in the village, leaving them with no option but the highly risk one of brewing their own mahua. Urea is alm­ost always added to hasten the process, making the concoction potentially toxic. Yogender Rai, a local, fears that the death count due to such toxic liquor will only rise in the days ahead.

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The younger lot use their boats to transport liquor, hiding them in sandbags or among vegetables. The only two policemen this reporter saw were at a tea shop on the Patna side. Pointing out that this part of the city is a hotbed of crime, Manjhi says, “Alcohol fuels criminality and now the ban on alcohol will boost criminal activities.”

On April 1, when the ban was ann­ounced, it was applied only to country-made liquor. That led to some plain talking between RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav and Nitish. RJD sources confirm that Laloo was particularly worried about tadi (palm wine), the staple drink of the oppressed castes, especially the Paswans, who had voted for RJD in the last assembly election. Manjhi and Ram Vilas Paswan too protested the ban on tadi. But Nitish was adamant and, as a compromise, extended prohibition to IMFL as well four days later.

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Laloo’s son, Bihar health minister Tej Pratap Yadav, is more circumspect on the tadi question, though. While his aide claims there is no ban on it, Tej Pratap corrects him to say that the matter is still under consideration. “We will enforce the tobacco ban just as rigorously as prohibition and make Bihar nashamukt (or intoxication-free),” he says. So, in case you are planning to visit Patna, it is advisable not to carry a bottle of liquor.

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