Covid & prohibition: Let’s put up a spirited battle, not fight ghosts

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Covid & prohibition: Let’s put up a spirited battle, not fight ghosts

ARUN RAM  11.05.2020

Being honest in politics is tough. Look at Karti Chidambaram. The Congress MP from Sivaganga last week said he doesn’t advocate prohibition. “I don’t agree with those who propose it. Almost all who propose total prohibition are hypocrites. Very few have the moral authority to do so,” said the son of former Union minister P Chidambaram in an FB post. Karti was attacked by his rivals, including men of such high morality as his former aide ‘Karate Thiyagarajan’.

The Tamil Nadu government blundered in opening liquor outlets last Thursday — an act that has probably given rise to what we may soon call the ‘Tasmac Covid cluster’. The desperation is evident as the state continues to lose an average of 90 crore daily from liquor sale (the total revenue in 2019-20 was more than 31,000 crore) at a time when it is scraping the bottom of the barrel. A simple solution would be to allow online sale and door delivery of liquor—something the government has been resisting despite courts giving their nod, obviously because it doesn’t want to upset the Tasmac shop guys who overcharge without a bill.

Let’s face it: Prohibition is a failed notion the world over. The idea of restrictions on the use and trade of alcohol has punctuated known human history; the earliest can be traced to the Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian law of 1754 BC Mesopotamia. In the early 20th century, protestants tried prohibition in North America, the Russians between 1914 and 1925, and the US between 1920 and 1933.

No doubt, alcoholism (not to be confused with drinking) has killed people, shattered families and shocked society, but projecting drinking as an act of sin and attributing all things ill to alcohol give me the hiccups. Here’s my unsolicited advice: If you can hold your drink, well, drink.

In India, Gujarat, Bihar, Nagaland, Mizoram, Manipur and Lakshadweep have prohibition laws, yet illegal sale of alcohol happens in these places. Same is the case in countries, mostly Islamic ones, that have prohibited alcohol on religious grounds.

Tamil Nadu has a history of intermittent prohibition, starting with C Rajagopalachari’s order in 1937. MGR finally launched Tasmac as the state seller of alcohol in 1983. I have lived through N T Rama Rao’s prohibition in Andhra Pradesh from 1995 (the same year his son-in-law snatched power in the famous ‘August coup’). During those years, at sundown, pagers (not many had mobile phones then) would beep out such messages like ‘are we reading or writing tonight?’ ‘Reading’ — note the initial alphabet — meant rum, ‘writing’ whiskey. As bootleggers laughed their way to the bank, the state bled. Naidu lifted prohibition in 1997.

Drinking is an informed choice. The authorities can spell out the ill effects, not stop him. Every liquor label legally sold in India carries the statutory caution: Consumption of alcohol is injurious to health. So do scrolls on our cinema and television screens whenever a character reaches out for a bottle (I wonder if anyone would remake Devdas again).

I bat for a different prohibition — that of driving after drinking. That alcohol impairs our motor and cognitive abilities temporarily (the very reason why many people drink) is an uncontested scientific fact. Campaigns against drunk driving have a higher impact than preaching on moral and religious grounds. A case in point is the impact made by campaigns of Mothers Against Drunken Driving (MADD), an NGO formed initially by women who lost their children to drunk driving in the US.

Such compelling campaigns work. The ‘sin theory’ doesn’t. The only sin I find in a single malt is in the spelling. But then, I also find a monk in Old Monk.

arun.ram@timesgroup.com