The spirit of liquor bans

The apex court rightly highlights futility of prohibition

The Supreme Court’s recent pronouncement on the futility of alcohol bans has rightly focused on the deleterious impact of such strictures on societal security and state finances. The court was giving its verdict on a case challenging restrictions on sales of methanol to industrial consumers. The restrictions were introduced by the Maharashtra government after 250 people had died consuming spurious liquor distilled from the chemical in a Mumbai bar in 1991. Stating that the prohibition did not end alcoholism, the two-judge Division Bench of Justice J B Pardiwala and Justice K Vinod Chandran highlighted five major “evils” associated with prohibition: Revenue loss, money spent on enforcement, corruption in police, illegal distilling, and a rise in secondary substance abuse.

 

Recent experience with prohibition in states largely reflects this pattern. In Haryana, then Chief Minister Bansi Lal’s 21-month experiment with prohibition in 1996 not only cost the state an estimated ₹1,300 crore in forgone revenue, it also encouraged the creation of a violent liquor-smuggling mafia, caused an upsurge in deaths from illicit liquor consumption, and resulted in the loss of thousands of direct and indirect jobs associated with the liquor trade. To compensate for the revenue loss, the state raised the prices of basic services — such as bus fares — and taxes on petrol. Not surprisingly, the policy cost Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas Party seats in subsequent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. In Bihar, where Nitish Kumar won the gratitude of women by imposing prohibition in 2016, the results have been suboptimal. A study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research said the ban had failed to reduce crimes against women. On the contrary, the state has seen an upsurge in crime owing to an exponential expansion of illicit liquor networks. Before the ban, liquor accounted for 14 per cent of the state’s own revenue, a sizeable sum to forgo for a state that tops the poverty charts, even as expenditure on (futile) enforcement burgeoned. As regards Gujarat, the court pointed to the consistent failure to prevent hooch-related deaths. It said the state had witnessed 10 major hooch tragedies since the its formation. Those claimed the lives of over 600 people. That apart, any visitor to the state can attest to the ease of accessing liquor, thanks to the existence of a well-oiled illegal supply chain.

 

The apex court’s own 2016 decree highlighted the limits of even partial prohibition. In a well-meaning effort to address drink-driving deaths and accidents, the court had proscribed the location of liquor vends within 500 metres of the outer edge of national and state highways. This order resulted in considerable creative collaboration among state excise departments, police, liquor vends and hotels located on the peripheries of highways to manipulate entrance gates to beat the distance rule. Two months later, the impracticality of the remedy caused the court to modify the order to exempt urban areas through which highways pass. There is no doubt that addressing problems related to alcoholism is critical but, as the judges have pointed out, the solutions lie elsewhere — such as in investment in de-addiction centres. The payment of worker wages to the woman of the household is another remedy that worked in the coalfields of northern Britain. These are certainly healthier options to explore than the blunt instrument of prohibition.