The war over liquor has returned to Kerala politics with the CPI(M)-led lDF Government officially announcing its resolve to formulate a new policy for reducing booze consumption, with public participation instead of the one introduced by the former Congress-led UDF regime, by which all bars in the State were closed down with the goal of achieving total Prohibition by 2024.
According to the left, the “Prohibition-through-phases policy” of the UDF was hypocritical and it had not brought down booze sales and consumption. The Congress is countering this argument, saying that the plan to formulate a new policy shows the determination of the CPI(M) to reopen the bars closed down during the UDF's tenure.
The war over booze has resurfaced now with Governor P Sathasivam's policy address in the Assembly on Friday, in which he said, “My Government is of the view that restrictions on consumption of liquor have not yielded the desired positive impact… The opinion of all sections of society will be taken into account before my Government formulates its policy (on liquor).”
Convinced that no amount of protest can force the left to drop its decision to formulate a new liquor policy, State Congress president VM Sudheeran on Sunday, the International Day against Drug Abuse, called for a referendum on liquor policy “like the one held in UK over Brexit”. “It should be a real referendum. 'Public opinion' collected from falsely constituted outfits is unacceptable,” he said.
The former UDF Government headed by Congress's Oommen Chandy had in August, 2014 started implementing its new liquor policy, by which all bars except those in the five-star hotels and elite clubs, were closed down. It had also decided to close down 10 per cent of the retail liquor outlets every year with the declared objective of achieving Prohibition in ten years.
In the context of the bar bribery controversy, involving several Ministers of the then UDF Government, the Chandy regime - allegedly under pressure from liquor lobby - issued licences for beer-wine parlours across the State. However, several anti-liquor crusaders, including an outfit of the mighty Catholic Church welcomed the policy even after this.
Even at that time there were allegations that the UDF's liquor policy was the product of an ego clash between Chandy and Sudheeran. According to observers, Chandy had unilaterally announced the Prohibition-through-phases policy to beat Sudheeran, who was opposing the reopening of 418 bars closed for lack of required facilities, in the Congress's intra-party war.
However, the policy did not help the Congress and the UDF in the May 16 Assembly election - just like then Chief Minister AK Antony's ban on arrack, the cheap colourless liquor, had failed to attract votes in 1996 - and the left, which had said in its manifesto that it would change the policy, grabbed power winning 91 of the total 140 seats in the Assembly.
The lDF Government is moving ahead with its plan to recast the liquor policy by putting emphasis on encouraging people to renounce booze through a massive campaign with public participation instead of banning it altogether at a time when many anti-liquor groups and individuals are feeling disappointed about the alleged futility of the UDF's policy.
“The UDF was merely betraying the people. Who said bars were closedIJ All that the UDF did, was to convert bars into beer-wine parlours and ensure that booze was freely available in the retails shops from where boozers picked it up and went home transforming their houses into bars,” said State CPI secretary Kanam Rajendran.
While Congress leaders still hold on to their claim that the UDF policy had indeed brought down liquor consumption, CPI(M) leaders are arguing, with the support of documents, that revenue from sale of liquor had actually gone up and that the bar closure has led to a dangerous rise in the use of narcotic substances, a fact the Congress's former Home Minister had admitted.
As more and more anti-liquor crusaders are beginning to suspect the effectiveness of the UDF's Prohibition-through-phases policy, Excise Minister TP Ramakrishnan of the CPI(M) has stated that the lDF regime will formulate its final policy on liquor only after discussing a draft paper on the matter among the public.