Why I feel Nitish Kumar banning alcohol is great for Bihar

Do you drink in your office cabin? Or in the canteen? No, you don't because you cannot. You don't condone a drunken driver, whether he drives a car, a train or flies a plane (this one called pilot, of course), do you? Why, because his or her drunkenness can endanger the lives of innocents. How about a drunken teacher teaching your kid? Never, are you mad?

Will you allow a drunken cop on patrol, or an intoxicated doctor to treat patients at a hospital? Or a group of "decently tipsy" revellers roaming the streets? Perhaps a big no would answer that. In fact, any role or any person becomes untrustworthy the moment the five-letter word "drunk" precedes their name.

So far, so good. Everybody agrees to these conclusions. But, trouble triggers the moment you expand such an agreeable logic, and extend it to the scary word called "prohibition". All hell breaks loose. Someone batting for prohibition becomes regressive, even draconian - and an enemy of civil rights and freedom of consumption, isn't it?

The anti-prohibition groups usually have two arguments - the man who drinks knows what he does and an adult should have the freedom to decide what to drink and what not to. Will you let the same, all-informed though intoxicated, adult do what he does for a living?

Let's repeat the questions - would you mind if an intoxicated, but informed doctor or a policeman, or a driver did what they do after a few drinks? No, not at all. Now, if drunken drivers, doctors, cops or engineers are not allowed, how can you support drunken fathers, husbands, mothers or sons? Would you allow someone to vitiate his or her family because they drink quietly at home?

Does liquor, considered bad at work, become good at home? Isn't that a double standard? If a drunken professional botches the job, an alcoholic father or husband ruins marriages and destroys childhood ,families and thus the society.

The effects are similar whether one drinks at work or at home. There has to be a limit to hypocrisy.

The alcoholics may have young, teenage, or grown-up children - they may have other family members bearing the brunt of the malaise. Each member of the family may be affected by alcohol differently, but the result is always harmful. Parental alcoholism leaves children struggling with low self-esteem, loneliness, guilt, feelings of helplessness, fears of abandonment, and chronic depression.

If we need an answer, it could only be that time has come for a doctrine against alcoholism that has no space for alibis or hypocrisy. The story will be incomplete without mentioning Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and his unmitigated drive for a liquor ban. What he has done in Bihar is not an anomaly, but a harbinger of things to come.

The media space in Bihar is surfeit with stories suggesting how crime rate has remained unaffected after prohibition, and how much of tourism revenue was lost after the ban on liquor imposed. Nitish Kumar may not have done any fiscal cost calculations while enforcing prohibition, but even by that yardstick, Bihar, in tangible terms, has only gained from prohibition.

According to India's Annual Health Survey (AHS) of 2010-11 - part of the demographic exercise conducted by office of Registrar General and Census Commissioner in India- about 9.5 per cent adults in Bihar, including women in the age bracket of 15 years and above, were in the habit of consuming alcohol.

If you place these details against 2011 Census figure, we will reach the number of at least 44 lakh alcoholics in Bihar prior to April 5, when prohibition was imposed in the state.

Even by the most conservative estimate, on an average, each of these drinkers had been spending Rs 1,000 per month on alcohol. This leaves you with savings worth Rs 440 crore every month. So, in the absence of the availability of alcohol in Bihar, the annual savings of erstwhile alcoholics would at least be Rs 5,280 crore.

A penny saved is a penny earned; so hold your breath, the amount of money thus earned would be 76 per cent more than the total excise duty of Rs 3,981 crore that Bihar government earned against sale of country and foreign liquor during 2015-16.

Better still, the government may have lost revenue, but the people of the state have clearly gained. The money thus saved will not only bring happiness and stability in the families of erstwhile alcoholics, but also increase money flow in the open market - unlike the government, which spends only in select services.

Prior to April this year, Nitish Kumar devoted the excise revenue to fund welfare schemes like bicycles for school going girls, which earned him laurels - and votes as well. The government spending also had a positive impact on Bihar's economy; but the trickle-down was slow and only felt in select spheres. However, when people spend such a huge amount every month, it spurs the economy more directly, causing an across-the-board cascading effect - visible in Bihar.

But prohibition has to be seen beyond economics. As drugs have wrecked havoc in Punjab, breaking up families and destroying individuals, alcoholism had become an epidemic for families in Bihar.Unlike the prosperous Punjab, alcoholism in Bihar - a state with a lower economic base and inferior medical coverage - had disrupted family life, causing harm that could have lasted a lifetime had prohibition not been clamped down.

The state may have earned money, just as well as the liquor traders. Agreed, the liquor business also generated employment. But, must it come at the cost of sinking the state this low - is it possible to contemplate anything but loss? Alcoholism leaves people with the loss of trust, loss of respect, loss of dignity, loss of purpose and loss of faith in each other.

Now, we are already flooded with stories from the backwaters, suggesting how fortunes of families have changed for the better in the past few months. We have numerous case studies. Let's save them for the future.

A word on crime. Numerous studies have proved how alcohol leads to the most heinous of crimes. All of the seven men who raped a woman and her 14-year-old daughter in Bulandshahr in August this year - in the most gut-wrenching incident that shook our conscience in recent times - were inebriated.

On the day of the incident, according to Meerut Zone Inspector General Sujeet Pandey, the men bought alcohol, went to a secluded spot and a drinking binge followed. They left the spot at around 11.30pm, and reached another spot, where they raped a woman and her 14-year-old daughter at 1.15am. Agreed, all alcoholics are not rapists, but the opposite could often be true.

Bihar has struggled while implementing prohibition at the operational level. There have been hooch-related deaths, bootlegging is a big challenge too - as 22 of Bihar's 38 districts share borders with Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal, besides Nepal, where there is no ban on liquor.

"The strong presence of drinkers coupled with diluted social values and weak preventive mechanism means the authorities will have to rely on a mix of persuasion and assertion along with sustained de-addition efforts to fructify the scheme," says Nawal Kishore Choudhary, a noted economist and senior professor.

The challenge for Nitish Kumar is how to implement prohibition. There is no question about the idea per se. He is convinced; and so is Bihar.

Also read: Modi must either ban alcohol or allow it in all states for same price