It seems that no amount of Governmental efforts can loosen the grip of wine go Bacchus in God’s Own Country. All bars in Kerala were closed on March 31 as per a Government policy aimed at bringing down alcohol consumption by reducing availability but the policy seems destined to fail if the heavy rush seen currently at the retail booze outlets is any indication.
The number of customers reaching the retail outlets of the Kerala State Beverages Corporation (Bevco), the State-owned monopoly liquor distributing company, has reportedly gone up by 200,000 per day since the closure of all bars except those at 24 five-star hotels and 33 elites’ clubs.
In fact, the sudden surge in the rush of boozers at the 300 Bevco retail outlets in the State is threatening to become a law and order issue and Bevco authorities have reportedly sought the help of police for crowd-control. Even Bevco’s own informal estimate is that each of its outlets is visited by 4,000 to 5,000 boozers a day, an official said.
Bevco sources said that around a million customers used to visit their retail outlets before March 31, the day the bars in Kerala had closed, but the number had gone up to Rs12 lakh a day since April 2, the first day of the new financial year.
“The indications are interesting. Almost all those who used to visit bars have, in their absence, started thronging the retail shops which means that the bar closure has effectively become a meaningless exercise,” said Kochukuttan Nair, an anti-liquor crusader. “This is just like shifting the swelling in one leg to the other,” he said.
What is even more disturbing — as far as the Government is concerned — is that there has been a huge increase in the sale of booze at the retail outlets since the closure of bars. The average increase of booze sales at retail outlets since April 2 has been by 20- percent to 25 percent, proving once again that the customers of bars have shifted en masse to the retail shops.
April 2, the first day of the new financial year and also the first day of the year for booze sales in the State (the first day of every month is a ‘dry day’ in Kerala), had witnessed a leap in liquor sales by 41 per cent compared to the same day last year. The sale on April 2 last was worth Rs38.37 crore while this had stood at Rs27.16 crore on April 2 last year.
liquor sales through Bevco outlets had shown a stunning leap last Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday. The leap was by 81 percent compared to the same day last year: On the day before Easter last year, Keralites had bought booze worth Rs23.11 crore from Bevco shops but this went up to Rs41.81 crore this year.
The upward trend in liquor sale at Bevco outlets had been noticed on all days since April 2, officials said. liquor worth Rs32.64 crore was sold on April 5 and Rs33.42 crore on April 6 while the sales were worth Rs27.43 crore and Rs26.34 crore respectively on the same days last year.
Kerala’s Congress-led UDF Government had on August 22 last announced its liquor policy for 2014-15 by which all bars — except those at five-star hotels — were to be closed and ten percent of the total retail liquor outlets had to go out of function every year in an effort for making the State totally liquor-free in the next ten years. The High Court approved the policy on March 31.