The social cost of prohibition in Bihar and Gujarat

PATNA/AHMEDABAD: Semaria is a quiet little place in Bihar’s Buxar. It’s easy to wake the town up at night. That’s what Guddu Singh, tipsy from the smuggled alcohol he had got his hands on, did. Repercussions were swift. But it was mostly his father Brij Behari, a retired school teacher, who had to pay for his son’s drunken transgression.“Ever since Guddu was arrested, I have been dipping into my meagre pension to meet the expenses of his children Luv and Kush. There’s no money left for me,” Brij Behari wailed. The family is shattered after the school recently threatened to cancel the names of the two kids as fees have been irregular. medium72304695Guddu is in jail now, among the 8,000 people behind bars whose bail petitions are pending before the Patna high court alone. All over the state, there are close to 40,000 with waiting applications, all booked for violating the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act 2016. Across, in Samistipur, another story is playing out, a little more tragically. Narayan Ram’s family in Sultanpur village has not even applied for bail. They did not have the money to. Ram has been in custody for three months. “We can’t hire an advocate for him," said his minor son Ganaur, adding they are now living off a loan from a farmer-neighbour on whose field Ganaur is forced to work as a daily wager. “I have no option,” the teenager said. medium nocaption72306447Though there’s been support from many quarters, especially women, for it, Bihar’s clampdown on those not adhering to laws that make it a dry state has come at substantial social cost, hitting families already poor and on the margins. Many, with their only male earning member either in jail or fighting a case, are in complete disarray.According to Bihar DGP Gupteshwar Pandey, over 2.55 lakh people have been booked in 2.14 lakh cases across 1,000 police stations and outposts in the state since the law came into effect in April 2016.IG (prison) Mithilesh Mishra said that Patna’s Beur central jail has a sanctioned capacity of 2,307 but it houses double the number with 4,517 inmates. Of these, 40% (1,835) are in on prohibition-related cases.Back in 2016, the idea of prohibition had been fiercely fought, with the Patna high court even calling the measure “draconian” while responding to a host of petitions. It was then argued that the ban would not only inspire bootlegging, but also cost the state heavily. Excise revenue from alcohol was a little over Rs 4,500 crore annually before prohibition. But it was a good poll promise and rich returns were expected electorally. It perhaps did too. medium72306083Far away in Gujarat, where prohibition has been in place for decades, the pile-up in courts has worsened after penalties were made more stringent under the Prevention of Anti-Social Activities Act (PASA) in 2017, the law invoked to tackle bootleggers.boxcontentStringent penalties...For ferrying liquor, penalty 10-year jail term, up from 3 years For consumption, maximum 3-year jail term, up from one yearIn case of hooch death, maximum punishment of life imprisonment converted into death penalty...yet cases under Gujarat Prohibition (Amendment) Act continue to rise1,70,785 cases in 20172,01,389 cases in 201882,689 cases till April 2019Many a times the outcome has been exactly opposite to what the government set out to control. Take the case of Alpesh Indrekar, 40, a resident of Sardarnagar who was in jail recently for five months. His family faced a tough time with their main earning member in prison. So they not only continued to brew liquor but increased the quantity. “They had to pay for my tiffin in jail. We had to shell out Rs 8,000 every month for it,” he said. “There was no other way.” On average since 2016, some 222 cases have been filed daily in Gujarat for flouting norms. There is no compilation of prohibition-related legal pendency in state courts but experts estimate that 50% are prohibition-related. "Half of the 16 lakh cases pending in courts have to do with prohibition," said Mehul Surti, a senior advocate. medium nocaption72306273Not surprisingly, in both Gujarat and Bihar, bootlegging has flourished. The trade has just been pushed underground. And so lucrative is the business that it attracts a fair number of youngsters in towns and villages. “It is more profitable,” said Shambhu, who identified himself by only his first name. “My salary in a Muzaffarpur garments shop was a paltry Rs 6,000 a month.”Sources in the prohibition and excise department conceded that “even on a conservative side”, alcohol sale was worth over Rs 1,000 crore annually. And it’s growing. RJD MLA from Maner, Bhai Birendra, said commoners faced the brunt of prohibition in any case. “It’s a farce. Liquor is available everywhere. What sort of prohibition is it,” he said. medium72305558Bootleggers have found unique ways to carry on. Only recently, SHO Prashant Kumar of Revelganj and his team intercepted a truck with a Punjab licence plate that entered Bihar at Manjha from UP with six “coffins” headed for Patna and Chhapra. It hid 4,337 litres of IMFL worth Rs 20 lakh. A police officer said bicycle tubes and vegetables, even fruits like watermelon, have been used to smuggle alcohol.While Bihar continues to lose thousands of crores in revenue from excise, Gujarat deputy CM Nitin Patel in June wrote to the Centre to consider granting more funds to Gujarat, “a state where prohibition is enforced...The Centre should compensate it...” He told the Union government that the state had lost approximately Rs 9,864 crore every year owing to the prohibition policy.There are of course those who swear by prohibition. In Bihar, Gita Devi, 45, of Dhibra in Danapur said her husband Bhola Shah would get into a fight at home every time he got drunk. “Those days were a nightmare. Now there is peace in my family.”