6 august 2018 http://www.openthemagazine.com 11
ANGLE I dEAsWhy ProhiBition
is doomed to FAil
T
Wo years aGo, when nitish
Kumar implemented prohibition
in Bihar through a law that sought to
imprison drunk people for five years, it
was abundantly clear that it was going
to fail. That he would impose some kind
of ban on alcohol consumption was
anticipated, but the ridiculousness of the
punishments meted out was unexpected
from someone who was thought to have
common sense.
This week, as he waters the law down,
it is obvious once again that wishful
thinking, even if with a sober mind, is at
play. a PTI report on the amendments
says: ‘speaking during the ongoing mon-
soon session of the state assembly, Bihar
cM nitish Kumar said, “after lot of con-
sultations and review of the liquor law in
last two years we have decided to make
amendment. if someone is caught drink-
ing he will be fined rs 50000/- or three
months in jail. if caught second time he
will be fined rs 1 lakh fine and 5 years jail.
now house where liquor was recovered
will not be seized and mass penalty provi-
sion has also been removed.”’
in principle, prohibition suits a
country like india. alcoholism is a
disease that takes its highest toll on the
poorest, and, while it afflicts men, it is the
women who bear its cost. it is precisely
the latter’s votes that make politicians
pursue this policy, even though leaders
who understand governance and
human nature know that what they set
on paper does no good to anyone except
policemen and bootleggers.
it is not a given that prohibition has
to fail. a country like saudi arabia, for
example, does it well enough. even
anna hazare enforced it in his village
and he didn’t even need a law to back
it up. he just tied drunks to a post and
flogged them. in some parts of india,
women have got together to create
no-alcohol localities using the coercion
of group strength. in small settings,
backed by threats of humiliation and
violence, with sufficient social support,
an eden without wine is doable.
Kumar, on the other hand, is the
chief Minister of Bihar, not exactly a
small and sparse area. on persisting
with the law, Kumar had told the Bihar
assembly, “Murders are committed
despite a law against it. That does not
mean the law has failed. What is needed
is greater social awareness.” There is no
pan-Bihar social movement for prohibi-
tion, much as the chief Minister would
like to will one into being. and what the
threat of a five-year sentence cannot do,
no social awareness campaign can.
The people who enforce prohibition,
the nuts and bolts of the law and order
machinery, are guilt-free consumers
of alcohol themselves. Given a choice
between catching drunks for no reward
and taking a monthly stipend from the
neighbourhood liquor baron, a police-
man who quaffs down half a bottle
every night has an easy choice. or he
will catch drunks only to extort money
from them. The greater the punishment
in the books, the bigger the bribe he gets.
There is no incentive for him to arrest
and legally punish anyone. reducing a
drunk daily labourer’s fine to rs 50,
is still good news for him. nREVERsAL
here’s a quiz. Who said the
following words recently? “in the
name of saving the cow, if you are
shifting focus to whether someone
is eating beef or not, then it is a
sham... you want to save ‘gau-mata’
(mother cow) but what about ‘mata’
(mother)...? our women are unsafe
and you are protecting cows.” These
words did not emerge from the
liberal camp. They were spoken
by someone from the other end of
the ideological spectrum. These are
the words of Uddhav Thackeray,
ironically the leader of a right-wing
party, the shiv sena, which has built
its politics by bullying minorities
and ‘outsiders’ (to Maharashtra)
and pushing its idea of hindutva
nationalism. The party was content
with goings-on so long as it was the
state’s dominant right-wing party
and the BJp a mere sideshow. But
now, as it increasingly gets muscled
out of the hindutva discourse, here
we have a shiv sena sounding like a
bleeding-heart liberal. n‘Wine is a turncoat;
first a friend and
then an enemy’
Henry FieldingW ORd’s WORThA drunk person can be fined rs 50,000 in Bihar
By madhavankutty piLLai