Sami Ahmad
PATNA—As the news of over three dozen deaths in Saran district due to the consumption of illicitly made liquor came to light on December 14, the anti-prohibition lobby started a scathing attack on Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar asking to ease or end the ban on liquor in the state which is effective since 2016.
Nitish Kumar’s partner in government till August 8, this year, Bhartiya Janata Party has tried to use this tragic incident to attack the chief minister and the state government by different means which included a controversial visit by the National Human Rights Commission.
There was quite a ruckus in the Bihar Assembly by the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party members to which Mr. Kumar got angry and alleged that it was they who are involved in the sale of liquor.
Whenever a hooch-related death is reported, the anti-Prohibition lobby starts targeting Nitish Kumar and declares this as the reason for the death. There were many hooch cases related to Bihar when the sale of liquor was legal and easily available in every nook of the state.
As soon as the deaths from Saran started to come, national media jumped in and joined the anti-prohibition chorus suggesting that Nitish Kumar’s prohibition policy is a failure claiming “prohibition does not work anywhere in the world.” With this, the pros and cons of prohibition also came into the debate.
About 2 crore people gave up drinking after Prohibition
As the criticism of prohibition increased after the Saran deaths, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar announced that the state government would arrange yet another second study to know the benefits of prohibition. The first survey-cum-study about prohibition in Bihar was completed in 2017. According to Mr. Kumar, it was revealed that around 1.64 crore people gave up drinking. He conceded that there was a revenue loss in the first year but afterward it decreased ‘as people started spending more on purchasing milk, vegetables and fruits, etc.’
80 percent support prohibition: Study
The first study, conducted jointly by Chandragupta National Law University and AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies, Patna reported that 80% of people supported prohibition and it. It was also told that there was an increase in family income due to savings from spending on alcoholic drinks. A Hindustan Times report referring to a pilot study carried out in 2017 says that a team of three doctors had come out with their finding that around 64% of habitual drinkers stopped consumption of liquor after the ban.
Apart from this study, there is also a general acceptance that the incidents of eve teasing and domestic violence done by drunkards. The girls coming from the coaching institutes in the evening and the women of the Dalit community are the most relieved lot nowadays thanks to the prohibition. People working for traffic safety say that after the prohibition came into effect, the number of road accidents has gone down sufficiently.
Financial Problems of Prohibition
While there are many noticeable benefits that are accepted but there is no denying it has some problems too. The earlier referred study tells that a livelihood crisis for people associated with the liquor business came to hit. Those people struggled to find a new source of income, though the government promised them state assistance. The other problem is that those who got arrested for violating the ban on liquor are the poor who find it very difficult to bear the legal fees.
The demand for compensation
Leader of Opposition Vijay Kumar Sinha of the BJP demanded that a compensation of Rs. 4 lakhs be paid to the kins of the deceased who lost their lives in the hooch tragedy. Bihar’s Excise and Prohibition minister Sunil Kumar states that storing, selling, drinking, or serving is totally banned in Bihar, so, there is no provision for such compensation similar to the case of deaths in criminal activities. However, some officials say that though the government is not supposed to be providing compensation in such cases, the kin of the hooch-related deceased may get financial help from the money recovered from the culprits like the smugglers and sellers of the liquor.
Opposition from BJP
Mr. Kumar says that in 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has praised him for his prohibition policy but now the BJP people are criticizing him. Mr. Modi had then come to Patna as Nitish had rejoined the BJP and dumped RJD after winning the Assembly election in 2015 with Lalu Prasad. The Bhartiya Janata Party as a political unit does not go in open to demand the withdrawal of the prohibition policy but their members do raise such demand in an individual capacity as it may hit their acceptance in the women folk. In fact, BJP as a party always supported Nitish Kumar on prohibition.
Human Rights Commission or Political Tool?
A team from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) visited Saran to probe the hooch tragedy.
Though there is no official word from the NHRC team, the state government has taken strong exception to their visit. State parliamentary affairs minister and senior JD(U) leader Vijay Kumar Chaudhary claimed that more hooch deaths had occurred in the BJP-rules states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and UP, but the NHRC team did not go there to probe. There are villages in tribal belt of Gujarat where young tribal women have become widowed due to the deaths of their husbands following the consumption of illicit liquor. He termed this probe by the NHRC team a misuse of the constitutional body. He expressed his surprise and said going to probe the hooch case is going beyond its stated aim of strengthening human rights and preventing their violation.
In this matter, the Bihar government got support from 14 different opposition parties including the Congress, DMK, TMC, RJD and NCP. They issued a joint statement saying that that was a brazen attempt to seek political mileage out of a devastating tragedy.
Is hooch caused by prohibition?
There is a section of influencers who makes it a point to suggest that had there been no or a lenient prohibition policy the hooch-related deaths could have been avoided. But this argument is not supported by evidence. It is true that due to prohibition, liquor for the weaker section goes out of their reach and therefore they fall prey to the cheaper version of liquor which many a time proves to be fatal. But there are many instances of deaths due to spurious liquor even if there was no ban on liquor. It seems that it is more of a law-and-order problem than the failure of the prohibition policy. It is also argued that no one can ensure a hundred percent ban on liquor, for that matter any crime, with the law but the positive aspects of prohibition weigh much more than the unfortunate outcomes. Many religious
leaders suggest that apart from the law, there should be moral and health awareness programmes to make the prohibition more successful.
