National

To Bottle Up, Or To Uncork?

Ill-effects notwithstanding, even 'Arthashastra' says no to prohibition. And a host of voices chime in...

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To Bottle Up, Or To Uncork?
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IS the right to drink one of the fundamental rights of an Indian citizen? The Constitution says no. The Directive Principles of State Policy, designed to create conditions conducive to the enjoyment of fundamental rights for all , states that prohibition of liquor is an important instrument for the achievement of justice and welfare. Prohibition, which is to become effective in Haryana from July 1, is already in force in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Manipur. Revenue short-falls from the loss of excise have reduced Hyderabad to bankruptcy, liquor smuggling in Gujarat has created a class of under world businessmen who ensure that liquor is freely avail able. In Kerala, the UDF government's ban on arrack did prevent it from being voted out. And "liquor deaths" in different parts of the country are now an almost inevitable consequence of lack of access to healthy alcohol. Drink may not be a fundamental right in India, but it appears to be a universally fundamental inclination.

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A flask of wine, a book of verse and a loved one were the three things necessary, said the 12th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam, to elevate wilderness to paradise. Eulogised in poetry and mythologised in prose, "the grape" is a Muse, almost an imperative for artistic greatness, always the recourse of the romantically challenged. But there is the other face of the fantasy: British lager louts, drunk and xenophobic, pillaging shopping malls in foreign countries. Or the terror of helpless women in rural India cowering in the darkness as violent husbands wreak havoc on family lives and budgets. A bullock-cart puller staggers up to a theka in Gurgaon, pulling out all his earnings for a "pauua", his little starving son clinging to his torn pajamas. The wife of a construction worker in Bombay works a 12-hour day as a domestic servant, only to be beaten every night for her money. "

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Yet prohibition is the worst way to try to restrict drinking," says sociologist M.N. Srinivas. "Prohibition means the poor will use illicit liquor, there will be frequent deaths, there will be a rise in lawlessness and organised crime. I believe in a strong temperance movement by the people, not the imposition of prohibition." 

The law itself may be fatally flawed but liquor vendors in parts of Haryana still express their full support for it. "Drinking is a bad thing," saysRaj Kumar, who works at a liquor stall in Sohna. "Beggars beg all day, buy drinks at night...just one person can be seen coming two or three times a day. This should be stopped. Because liquor shops are open all day, people get into a routine of drinking, the poor spend all their money on it. We should have prohibition, but it should be enforced all over India. At the same time, the Government should also think of the plight of the workers in the distilleries and shops, who will be out of work because of the new law."

 The morality surrounding alcohol sharply illustrates the conflicting worlds of modern India. The winds of liberalisation have blown in an array of foreign drinks. Close to half-a-dozen leading Scotch distillers have set up operations here, and Malibu addicts and Peach Schnapps aficionados are raising a toast to a new, emerging India. However, in a seeming paradox, across the tracks there is a gathering demand to ban all alcohol. For the cosmopolitan urban middle class, drinking is, as Jug Suraiya, senior editor of the Times Of India puts it, a social activity, sometimes even a professional duty. "The next thing that will happen is that the state will legislate on conjugal behaviour," says Suraiya. "Steps must be taken to ensure rural development so that the man who seeks temporary oblivion from poverty is helped, the female victims of male alcoholism cared for, but for the state to intrude into homes and seek to ban all consumption of liquor is overstepping the boundaries." 

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Yet the crucial dilemma here is the operation of individual freedom in an unequal society. Is the so-called freedom of the rich to be enjoyed without consideration of their Must millions of women suffer, or the urban poor be ravaged by addiction, because the affluent need to stop off for their beer and gin on the way back from upwardly mobile professions? When someone suffers as a result of someone else's so-called freedom, it is a distortion of that freedom, says former MP and social activist Madhu Dandavate. "The issue of prohibition should not be considered in the context of revenue loss alone. The law is unpopular because there are so many pro-liquor lobbies. But women are in the forefront of the agitation and the administrative machinery must ensure that the long-term benefits of prohibition are achieved," Dandavate asserts.

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However, the benefits of prohibition are difficult to establish. Andhra Pradesh faces a revenue loss of Rs 1,800 crore, Haryana stands to lose over Rs 400 crore, Gujarat registers over one lakh cases of prohibition violation every year, despite 21 amendments to the Prohibition Act of 1949, and has faced a loss of over Rs 1,000 crore. Officials at the Haryana Excise and Sales Tax department say the revenue shortfalls will be made up by restricting income tax and sales tax violations, which are estimated at Rs 300 crore. "But no concrete proposals have been formulated yet," they admit.

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"Prohibition has never worked," says film-maker Shyam Benegal. "It only creates a wretched cycle where the revenue that rightfully belongs to the Government goes to the underworld. The fact is, drinking can't be stopped, those who can afford the bottle will flaunt it, those who can't will be thrown to the wolves." 

The Grand Old Man of Prohibition in India was, of course, Morarji Desai. Parashuram Madhav Pant was Desai's deputy commissioner of prohibition when it was first introduced in the old Bombay state in 1949. He was once called "Hitler Pant" by Blitz magazine for the spectacular actions he and his men carried out at fashionable Bombay parties and country liquor outlets. "Morarji Desai was a puritan, he regarded drinking as a heinous crime, on a par with murder, and he wanted to wipe it out completely. He used to say that fashionable people laugh at politicians, I want to put the fear of God into them," says Pant.

Yet, the veteran warrior against wine now admits prohibition did not work as well as it should have. "For the amount of money and personnel that were pumped in, the results were not proportionate. People drank spurious preparations, eau de cologne. Prohibition opened up new areas of corruption in the police and excise departments. But Morarji Desai wanted to go down in history as the foremost Gandhian."

 Gandhi's conception of prohibition was surely part of the Mahatma's mission to wipe the tears from every eye, but as Rajmohan Gandhi says, it was an idea rooted in a different age and in a different context. "If we want to honour Gandhi, we should do what our mind and conscience tell us, not look for a Gandhi dictionary on prohibition, liberalisation, computers and so on. Gandhi was a realist, the sufferings of women certainly motivated him to think as he did on drinking. " Interestingly, in a study done by Dr B.N. Parmar of the Bahuddin Arts College at Junagadh, women from the poorer strata were found to form 40 per cent of alcohol offenders in Gujarat. There was an increase of 13 per cent in such cases from 1989 to 1993, and at this rate women will soon form half, if not more, of all alcohol offenders. Explains Mohini Giri, who chairs the National Commission for Women: "This is because during prohibition if policing is inadequate, women are forced to brew liquor at home for their husbands. Prohibition is a thrust area for the NCW. We must have it. I've even written a letter of congratulation to Bansi Lal. But it should be imposed all over the country."

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 Indeed prohibition in one state, an island of austerity in a bacchanalian neighbourhood, is bound to fail. Liquor already flows into Haryana from Rajasthan, Punjab and Delhi. Residents of Hyderabad frequent border towns in Maharashtra, arrack is smuggled into Tamil Nadu from Karnataka and IMFL (Indian-Made Foreign Liquor) gushes into Gujarat from Udaipur and the island of Daman. On camel-back and through forest, across the seas and by trucks, spirits flow freely, making the distinction between 'dry' and 'wet' states a purely bureaucratic one. Policemen are bribed en route and locals turn a blind eye. As Krishen, resident of Manesar (Haryana), says, "In times of poverty, any dhanda is acceptable. And when there is prohibition, smuggling becomes a lucrative dhanda ."

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Former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy says implementation of "dry laws" are impracticable. However, in sharp contrast, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has declared: "My government is committed to implementing the dry laws and we will spare nobody, however big they may be." Social life in Hyderabad and Secunderabad has already been severely affected and young entrepreneurs in the state have lost heavily on investments.

 "Prohibition has not and cannot work," says writer O.V. Vijayan. "It is introduced purely for populist reasons." Perhaps prohibition also taps into the traditional perception among Indian upper castes that drink is improper, even a sin and a symbol of evil. For example, the revolutionary social changers of the 1830s in Bengal led by Henry Derozio sought to overthrow convention by openly eating beef and drinking whisky. Although among poorer sections, drinking was a part of cultural rituals, the upper Brahminical orders kept away from meat and alcohol. It is only with westernisation that the upper classes became IMFL drinkers and chotta pegs became widely acceptable. But the phenomenon is recent, hardly as well established as in the West. 

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Now the right to drink is seen as on a par with the right to speak one's mind and express oneself, as writer Khushwant Singh believes. But Brahm Prakash, an alcoholic rickshaw puller from Gurgaon, says he does not drink from freedom. "Hooch controls me," he says, head bowed. But whether the rights of the rich or the addiction of the poor, it seems clear that prohibition will only make the lives of both classes worse. Perhaps Kautilya has the answer. A ban on drink will solve nothing, says the most famous statesman of ancient India, but there is need to work towards a moderate drink culture. The Arthashastra prescribes special drinking halls, effective inn-keepers who restrict timings and curbing the freedom of movement of those who are drunk. Omar Khayyam would probably not approve. But the desperate agitators against arrack might.

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