Editorial: Bihar’s misguided policy

Excessive alcohol consumption should be treated as a health problem, and not a law and order problem

In this time and age, prohibition is an impractical and unimplementable idea. Imposing the dry law is not an ideal way to check the menace of alcoholism or to promote public awareness about the deleterious effects of liquor abuse. Despite the clear failure of its prohibition policy, the Nitish Kumar government is persisting with the failed experiment. Now, it is embarking on yet another ill-conceived move to carry out a house-to-house survey to evaluate the status of the prohibition imposed in the State in 2016. This is a complete waste of resources and energy. Covering a minimum of 2,500 households in each of the 38 districts, the survey is ostensibly meant to assess the impact of prohibition: how many people have quit alcohol, if people’s quality of life has improved and if domestic violence cases have reduced. It must be pointed out that prohibition has failed to check liquor production in Bihar. During the period April 2006- September 2023, the police seized 2.16 crore litres of liquor, including 74.97 lakh of country-made liquor. As the experience has been with prohibition elsewhere, Bihar’s liquor ban has led to a spike in illicit trade, hooch deaths and arrests, disproportionately, of the poor and vulnerable. According to official estimates, nearly 200 people have died in hooch tragedies since the imposition of dry law. Over 3.75 lakh cases have been registered and at least 25,000 people have been imprisoned for violating the liquor ban — most of them are poor.

In the past, the dry law experiments had failed in many States. The combined Andhra Pradesh’s tryst with dry law in the mid-1990s was a spectacular failure. An anti-arrack agitation started by a group of women at Dubagunta village in the coastal district of Nellore in 1990 snowballed into a State-wide social movement. It became a dominant issue in the run-up to the 1994 elections, prompting NTR to promise total prohibition. True to his words, the first file he signed as Chief Minister, after sweeping the Assembly polls, was on banning liquor. However, the State government had to grapple with rampant smuggling and the free flow of illicit liquor, besides massive loss to the exchequer. The dry law turned out to be a big failure, leading to an increase in bootlegging. Driven against the wall by administrative problems, financial worries and increased smuggling, the Chandrababu Naidu government finally ended the prohibition in 1997. In Bihar, even the ruling party leaders have joined the chorus for a review of the liquor ban. Nitish Kumar is being accused of ignoring the adverse consequences of his policy, choosing to take a high moral ground instead. The linchpins of liquor cartels are having a free run. It is imprudent to treat excessive alcohol consumption as a law and order problem, as Bihar does. In fact, it should be treated as a health problem.

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