Clean up the distilleries

SURA, Sanskrit for alcohol, is so intrinsic to Hindu mythology that the court of Indra, the king of the gods, cannot be conceived without Urvashi, Menaka or the other apsaras pouring sura for the heavenly courtiers. In fact, Balarama, one of the 10 avatars of Vishnu, is supposed to have enjoyed his drink thoroughly like thirsty mortals. So, not to make good alcohol available is to be anti-Hindu, which in the lexicon of new India, is to be anti-national — a charge that can be slapped against many Indian state governments. But particularly against the governments of Punjab and Haryana. Not a day passes without a story in the newspapers about hooch tragedy, liquor smuggling, spurious liquor hunt or illicit liquor sales.

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The great Indian hypocrisy allows politicians to make money from liquor without being accountable to tax-paying drinkers.

The latest that appeared on Friday is that of liquor being smuggled to Bihar in cement primer buckets. The Sonepat police have seized 300 bottles of Indian-Made Foreign Liquor (one of the most hilarious paradoxes of modern Indian life) neatly concealed in buckets meant for cement primer. As is the case mostly, the source of the bottles — the distillery — has not been identified and some Dhruv Kumar and Shiv Kumar have been arrested as if they have distilled, bottled, labelled and sold the stuff meant to be smuggled for Bihar’s craving taxpayers. Of course, the primary culprit here is the Bihar government that has enforced a moralistic prohibition, which has criminalised an ancient Hindu urge. But the role of distillers and the government regulators in Haryana cannot obviously be ignored.

Similarly, the Punjab government has made no headway in the investigation into the Majha liquor tragedy that killed 110 people in Tarn Taran, Amritsar and Batala in August 2020. Not much was expected of the previous government that had allegedly allowed distillers to clandestinely run retail outlets, causing humongous losses to the exchequer. That is, there were instances of distillers sending truckloads of bottles of alcohol to retailers without paying excise tax, thereby cheating the government and also the consumer, who had to cough up the tax included in the printed retail price. The new government does not seem to have caught the old crooks or at least those who were responsible for producing and transporting alcohol contaminated with deadly methanol.

The death of 110 drinkers across three border districts of Punjab proved beyond doubt that there indeed existed a network of producers, transporters and sellers of alcohol and that this tragedy could not have been the handiwork of some local jaggery-maker doubling up as distiller during the cane season. This means that there exist established networks involving distilleries that bypass the retail outlets also. A convenient paint-seller can be shown as responsible for the methanol that caused 110 deaths, but that does not obfuscate the near-permanent nature of the network. That is, distillers selling labelled or unlabelled desi alcohol to an underground network of roadside sellers who pass off as hooch-makers when they are actually selling factory-distilled alcohol. For, de-natured or methanol-contaminated alcohol can only come from a distillery.

That the Extra Neutral Alcohol (ENA) seized in Punjab’s Ghanaur in June 2020 was meant for bottling had proved the involvement of distillers, but expectedly nothing came of it. Even when 2,000 litres of ENA was seized by Punjab’s excise department in August this year, there was no reference to the distillery. Justice MR Shah, a Supreme Court judge, while accusing the Punjab government of treating illegal liquor traders with kid gloves last month, had said, “In a hooch tragedy, who is the sufferer? Not those who can afford whiskey. Common people and the downtrodden are the sufferers…” In fact, in Punjab, even single malt-drinkers are not spared because there is a thriving market of spurious imported liquor where cheap local stuff is poured into perfectly labelled and packaged bottles of imported liquor, each costing thousands or tens of thousands of rupees. Even two weeks ago, Justice Shah warned Punjab of Bihar-like hooch tragedies.

The latest hooch tragedy in the region was in Panipat last month when four persons succumbed to a deadly concoction. Initial doubts of a sugar mill being the source of the spurious drink were not proven. But the mega bucks are in smuggling bottled drinks to Gujarat. Every now and then, a few hundred bottles are seized with no information on the source of the alcohol. Early this week, 1,023 boxes of liquor were seized in Manesar, which were bound for Gujarat. The Haryana Assembly witnessed an embarrassing moment when the state government’s tally of hooch deaths was proved wrong by information given out by the Central government in Parliament — 36 versus 489 deaths in six years in Haryana.

The primary reason for the criminalisation of the liquor industry is the great Indian hypocrisy that allows politicians to make money from liquor without being accountable to tax-paying drinkers. Apart from the conceited religiosity of abstinence, the colonial administration had also played its part in criminalising local brewers and distillers while promoting only British drinks as fashionable or legitimate. India, thus, does not have its own best-selling brands of alcohol in the international market. It is now time for governments to legitimise regional drinks — brews and distillates — by licensing local entrepreneurs and taxing them appropriately. This could overnight create local entrepreneurs and village-level millionaires. Of course, it would hit many big distillery-owners and their political patrons and that is the only reason why Bacchus-worshipping politicians of the region never ever considered making the industry globally competitive.

Punjab and Haryana governments cannot decide whether Gujarat and Bihar should continue with their flawed prohibition. But it is high time they cleaned up the states’ distilleries. These cannot remain cash cows for bent politicos and cops. The false morality of maligning the drink and the drinker cannot become an official veneer for tax evasion, smuggling and outright murder-by-contamination. Let us spread the cheer of good drinks from micro-distilleries across the region that earn the government revenue and offer the best local spirits. Happy New Year.