Prohibition is bound to fall flat on its face
Kerala's Congress-led UDF Government has embarked on a Herculean task of implementing a total ban on liquor in the next 10 years. But this is bound to fail. The programme is to be implemented in stages: First, the 418 bars closed on April 1 for lack of facilities will not be allowed to reopen. Second, the 312 functioning bars will be closed down soon. Third, 10 per cent of the 384 retail liquor outlets, run by Government's own agencies, will be shut down every year. Through this, the Government aims to eradicate liquor which moralist politicians and religious clerics think is the source of all evils, including the mafia , murders, rapes and incest. The Government stands to lose annual revenue of almost Rs 10,000 crore — nearly 20 per cent of the total revenue of the State — in taxes and duties. However, the Government does not intend to ban production, sale or consumption of toddy, the liqueur extracted from coconut and palmyra trees. Moreover, it does not want to stop the operation of bars in five-star hotels, causing criticism that what it is actually doing is reserving the enjoyments of life to the elite. Still, the generally perceived fact is that what forced Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to approve the liquor ban is political survival. For Mr Chandy, the liquor ban was an implement to win his war in the Congress against State party president VM Sudheeran. Mr Chandy has won that war, and along with it he has satisfied the Catholic Church whose top clergy had last week threatened to pull down his Government if he went on with the policy of appeasing the ‘liquor lobby’, and the Muslim league, his one-time ally in the UDF which had unexpectedly chosen to support Mr Sudheeran. Still, crucial questions remain: How practical is a ban on liquorIJ How is the Government going to ensure spurious liquor does not flood God's Own Country in the absence of licensed boozeIJ Mr AK Antony, when he was the Chief Minister, had in 1996 banned the sale of arrack, claiming that this was a first step towards prohibition.
The results were disastrous — politically, socially and economically. The Congress could not attain its immediate goal of winning the 1996 Assembly poll. The poor, who had to spend only small sums of money on arrack, had to shell out huge parts of their paltry income to buy Indian-Made Foreign liquor. In 1995-96, the IMFl sales turnover in the State was just Rs 477.60 crore. But it leapt to Rs 1,000.83 crore a year later which by 2013-14 grew to Rs 9,350 crore. The Government is not clear on how the enforcement wing of the Excise Department, which has only a meagre staff strength, is going to ensure that illicit liquor is not produced and consumed, or that liquor is not smuggled into the State, whose 10 districts share borders with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu where there is no prohibition. Also, the Government has the obligation to prove that crime rates do come down because of the liquor ban, but those working on the ground say this is unlikely to happen. If the Government does not follow up its politically-inspired but misplaced programme with effective, sincere and practical action, the entire exercise is going to be counter-productive, plunging Kerala’s society into more serious problems, the resolution of which will be nearly impossible.