The death toll in the West Bengal liquor tragedy has already crossed the 170-mark while dozens of victims battle for life. As in most such cases, the victims are rickshaw-pullers and daily wage earners. They consumed poisonous alcohol, sold in convenient plastic pouches by illicit distillers and their agents. The relatives of the victims insist that the business had been going on for years, right under the nose of the police. That so many people had fallen victim on one day shows that the illegal business had been flourishing in the area. Police and excise authorities cannot claim to have been caught unawares by the disaster. It’s as clear as daylight that the authorities concerned had been turning a blind eye to the racket going on in the area, possibly because they were party to it.
The tragedy is a reminder of how illegal liquor operations flourish across the slums of urban India and among the rural poor. This goes on despite strict laws against spurious liquor because corrupt police, local officials and tax authorities all get a cut of the profits and politicians patronise ring leaders of illicit liquor trade for their petty gains. While law enforcement agencies must step up their campaign to eliminate illicit liquor trade, it is also necessary to ensure easy access of safer liquor.
This may enrage prohibitionists, who will be quick to point that prohibition is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy enshrined in the Indian Constitution. But despite being a lofty ideal, evidence from across India shows that prohibition just doesn’t work. Alcoholism is a social menace that needs to be tackled in a sensitive, intelligent, multi-pronged way. Driving it underground, to dangerous devices, is clearly not the way. Till the people, particularly the poor who are vulnerable to the exploitation of their addiction by the merchants of deaths, are persuaded to give it up, the state cannot leave them to die. Takeover of liquor distribution by the government, which has been successfully practised in Tamil Nadu and some other states, is one of the options.
