Indian Views On Drink Change

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31763, 21 August 1968, Page 18

Indian Views On Drink Change

(N.Z P A -Reuter—Copyright)

NEW DELHI.

India’s prohibitionists are fighting an uphill battle to get a ban on liquor by the centenary in October next year of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth.

Although nearly half India: was dry a few years ago, j total prohibition is now in force in only two states—; Gandhi’s home state ofj Gujarat and Madras. Gandhi himself regarded ! drink as a major evil. “1 hold drink to be more damnable than thieving and perhaps even prostitution,” he once said. The massive loss of revenue is the main reason why most of India’s 17 states do not enforce the directive against drink embodied in the nation’s constitution. Maharashtra, once a strict prohibitionist state, lifted restrictions on beer-brewing and drinking earlier this year. The Orissa State Cabinet decided to scrap prohibition last year to boost revenue, estimating an extra flow into the state coffers of about 1,125,000 dollars per annum from taxes on liquor sales. Mysore, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh ha j all abolished total prohibition during the last 18 months, either to get more revenue or because they found anti-drink laws unenforceable. When a Government commission recommended in 1964 that drink should be cut out by 1976 with a 12-year phased prohibition programme, the central planning commission opposed the suggestion on the grounds that about 428 million dollars in revenue would be lost to the central and state Governments in any five-year period. The Deputy-Prime Minister (Mr Morarji Desai), the leading proponent of anti-drink laws in Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet, said recently that the central Government would compenstate the states if

they lost revenue introducing prohibition.

But the compensation level —5O per cent—and the fiveyear reimbursement period he laid down are insufficient incentives for most chief ministers. Indians can buy liquor freely in most states, but some states manage to make a compromise between their ideals and their pockets by banning liquor sales in one or two areas or on one or two days a week. Foreigners can normally obtain permits to buy drink in dry areas on dry days, although they may not drink it in public. But prices are prohibitive a bottle of

Scotch costs about 15 dollars.

In Delh;—fairly lenient,

witl only nine dry days a month—hotels have special

bars for foreigners. People in towns and villages turn to bizarre forms of drink. More than 80 people in Madras died after drinking varnish last year, and reports of deaths from poisoning after illicit liquordrinking sessions are common. The prohibitionists’ reasons for separating man and bottle range from straight-laced Puritanism to dismay at seeing vital foodstuffs such as barley, sugar, maize and rice made into intoxicating drink when they could be better used in their natural form.