Kicking the habit in Kerala

Kerala has taken the plunge. With its decision to close down 730 bars at one go and implement total prohibition in phases over a decade, the State has sprung a surprise. The questions thrown up are many: how will the State manage the revenue shortfall? As enforcement of prohibition is a difficult task, will it not lead to a surge in illicit spirit? Has the State encroached on liberty?

August 31, 2014 01:10 am | Updated December 04, 2021 11:36 pm IST - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

One defining image of modern Kerala is of scores of men standing patiently in winding queues every five kilometre or so on major roads and junctions in the State. The lines form through the day not before ration shops or the grocer’s but before liquor outlets — those of the Kerala State Beverages Corporation (Bevco), the sole liquor retailer in the State.

There is a certain kind of homo-sociality at work in these queues as the men brave heavy rain and scorching shine to reach dirty wire-mesh counters to make a quick buy.

Though not as visible, the bars that dot the State too present a similar picture of clamour and all-male jostling and, often, the same language of disdain from across the counter, all of which go to brew a bitter concoction that play havoc with normal social behavioural patterns. The queues in front of the Bevco outlets have swelled these past few days and the patience of those in the queues have begun to wear thin with the timer set by the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government to rid the State of liquor in 10 years beginning to tick. Come mid-September, all 730 bars selling Indian-made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) in the State would cease to function. Every year hence, 10 per cent of the nearly 400 retail liquor outlets will down their shutters.

The government decision has found wide welcome in Kerala society, from prohibitionists naturally, but more importantly from among women who have been paying a heavy price in terms of domestic peace and their children’s security, and healthcare givers who have been watching in alarm the appalling rise in liquor-related morbidity among men. Although Kerala does not rank at the top of the heap of States in per capita liquor consumption, the general consumption levels have been showing disturbing trends in recent years. Most worrying, the average age of drinkers has been falling steadily in the State, the age of initiation into drinking falling from 18-19 in the 1980s to 14 or less now, despite a legal bar on selling liquor to the under-aged.

Given such trends and tendencies, it was natural for a wide spectrum of Kerala society to welcome the government decision. But such welcome has been accompanied by serious concerns about its moral, financial, administrative and social implications. With signs of growing alcohol dependence among a large section of the male population causing great distress, the ethical question of the State trying to curtail the individual’s freedom of choice has been largely sidelined, but not so the issues relating to enforcement, revenue flows and possibility of new social behaviour patterns emerging in the State. The unanimity of the State Cabinet on the issue itself has come apart shortly after the decision was announced with many Ministers voicing their concern about the way it would impact the State’s revenue flows, cause labour displacement and affect the money-spinning tourism industry.

Worries about the government decision arise primarily from the manner in which the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) reached there. The history and experience of prohibition or what it would heal and where it would hurt never figured in any discussion within the Congress, the ruling alliance or in the larger society. It is widely seen as having been arrived at as a strategy to settle scores among leaders in the Congress and break a four-month long stalemate involving Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his compatriots in government on the one side and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president V.M. Sudheeran on the other. The stalemate was over the government move to restore the licences of 418 bars shut down from April 1 following a Supreme Court order and Mr. Sudheeran’s firm opposition to reopening them.

Until on the eve of the ban decision, Mr. Chandy and his compatriots were for a “pragmatic” approach that would see at least those bars that had a certain standard got reopened. However, by then, major allies of the Congress took a public stand against reopening the closed bars. With Mr. Sudheeran digging in and the allies virtually backing him, the other side saw more virtue in going for a full-scale shutdown of all the 730 two- and three-star bars and approving the roadmap for a heavy clampdown on sale of hard liquor.

The government has spared bars in five-star hotels and beer and wine parlours from the shutdown. Prohibitionists want them also closed, but that looks a difficult call because of the fear that it would matters worse for the tourism industry. More toddy is an option, but toddy production has fallen sharply over the years and what is sold as toddy is feared to be mostly spurious liquor.

When he was the Chief Minister, A.K. Antony had tried to take the State on the path of prohibition in stages by banning sale of arrack in 1995-96. The measure did not bring down liquor consumption, but it brought money that the liquor contractor-politician-bureaucrat nexus earlier shared out into the open and with IMFL sales soaring, helped the government increase its revenue massively from about Rs. 200 crore then.

During 2012-13, the government earned Rs. 7,240.89 crore in tax revenue from IMFL sale and, in the first four-and-a-half months during this fiscal, it has already earned Rs. 3,754.18 crore. If there was to be no curb, the State will have earned an estimated Rs. 9,000 crore in tax revenue this year, crucial for a State that has a Rs. 64,482-crore budget. The hope is that robust social and human health dividends will more than compensate for such losses. That is, if the Oommen Chandy government’s experiment succeeds. If it fails, the State would end up with a far more intractable problem than the one it has, for its political reasons, sought to resolve.

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