Banning The Bottle Has Never Worked

<div>The horrific death of 102 persons in Mumbai after drinking contaminated liquor comes as a reminder of the enormity of the problem – the widespread drinking habit among people looking for a cheap kick; and the failure and connivance of the monitoring authorities to stop the illegal brewing and distribution of hooch. It was tragic-comedy indeed with Mumbai treated to a circus of ministers from the same party using the issue to score brownie points and to point fingers at each other.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>When the matter was raised in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly recently, Eknath Khadse, the state Excise Minister, faced a volley of attack from the Congress leader Balasaheb Vikhe Patil, who demanded a ban on sale of liquor to end the problem of hooch deaths. Eknath Khadse, instead of admitting the lapses of his department, pointed to the home ministry blaming the failure of the police for the liquor deaths. Now, everyone knows BJP’s Khadse was a chief minister hopeful, and there is no love lost between him and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who heads the home department.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Beyond ministers sniping at each other, a cynical liquor policy is in motion. Despite the failure of Prohibition in the country and in Gujarat, somehow the political class thinks it can stop liquor addiction by banning the brew. Following problems of liquor addiction in the tribal belt, Maharashtra has recently banned liquor sale in the tribal districts of Gadchiroli, Chandrapur and Wardha. Excise minister Khadse’s next target, he announced in the assembly, is Yavatmal and Nagpur districts. Both districts are notorious for farmers’ suicides, and Khadse said a ban would help stem the tide!</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><table align="right" border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 200px;"><tbody><tr><td><img alt="" src="http://bw-image.s3.amazonaws.com/Gurbir-Singh-new_mdm.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 200px; margin: 1px; float: right;"></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Gurbir Singh</strong></td></tr></tbody></table>Curiously, the BJP-Shiv Sena policy on liquor is a continuation of the previous Congress-NCP legacy, which made Maharashtra the most ‘excised’ and expensive where booze was concerned. Ajit Pawar, the NCP deputy Chief Minister and then excise minister, spelled out a policy of stepping up excise duty rates as a tool to reduce drinking. In FY2014, he raised excise duty on country liquor by nearly 20 percent and on Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) by 25 percent. This hardly brought any changes in drinking habits. In that financial year, IMFL sales went up 8 percen t to 1,615 lakh BL, while country liquor fell marginally by 5 percent to 3,211 lakh BL. What the data does not reveal is that a substantial part of the country liquor sales shifted to hooch and with that came all the problems of contamination and death.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>This year the BJP continued Ajit Pawar’s policy of hiking excise rates on country liquor pushing up the retail price of a 180 ml bottle of from Rs 33 to Rs 45. Strangely, IMFL or the high priced brands were left untouched. While the BJP sarkar will quietly collect another Rs 1,000 crore on country liquor tax, the public justification is that higher prices will bring down drinking.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Facts have shown otherwise. The hooch tragedy has once again proved that people just shift to cheaper, more dangerous options. The woods of the Borivali National Park, on the borders of Mumbai are openly festering with hooch-bhattis, and the haftas are routinely paid to the policemen and politicians to protect them. Expectedly, there have been a few raids, and after the brouhaha is over, it will be business as usual. &nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>What has to be questioned in the long term is the motive behind the policy to ban sales and hike excise on liquor as a measure to beat the bottle. Either the politicians are plain stupid to think that cultural habits can be controlled with these mechanism. Or, it is a more subtle game is to push brewing underground, which is more lucrative to all concerned.&nbsp;</div>