Drink and U-turn

Alcohol works the same way in Kerala as anywhere else — makes you pleasantly tipsy or, if overindulged, drunk and stupid. But in Kerala, there’s one difference. There’s more hypocrisy around alcohol here than in almost any other place in India. For instance, gentlemen or women do not buy alcohol from a public shop, because though you enjoy your drink, it is not ‘respectable’ to be seen buying it. In Kerala, where sunlight is glorious, most bars are pitch dark, because it is not ‘nice’ to be seen drinking — darkness provides anonymity.

This double standard reveals itself in another bizarre manner. Alcohol brings the state an annual revenue of ₹9,500 crore — a significant 23 per cent of the economy — from a turnover of ₹11,000 crore. But hypocrisy demands that alcohol be sold from surroundings akin to a pigsty. State-run outlets force the (approximately) five per cent Malayalis who consume alcohol — or the ‘sinners’ — to queue up under the burning sun and pouring rain in filth, mud and garbage because the state wants to humiliate you for committing the ‘immoral’ act of buying alcohol... sold by the state. Forget that it makes a whopping 600 per cent profit per bottle. Or that much of the alcohol promoted by the State Beverages Corporation is of dubious quality, if not dangerously sub-standard or spurious. I speak from my modest experience as a consumer. Besides, alcohol has a paramount non-drinking role. As a brush to tar your enemy with, it is only second to sex in Kerala — a weird place, getting weirder every day.

The recent prohibitionist excursion of the United Democratic Front (UDF) government was another instance of this unhinged mindset. It was so imprudent and suicidal that in just a few weeks, there’s a shamefaced turnabout — a messy end to a miserable misadventure. The rhetoric surrounding alcohol is a ubiquitous moral cliché in Kerala, mostly touted by the Catholic church (which incidentally owns 23 licensed wine distilleries for the production of ‘ritual’ wine of 15.5 per cent v/v alcohol) and generally by anyone who wishes to adopt a holier-than-thou stance, such as the so-called Gandhians. VM Sudheeran, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president and AK Antony protégé, whose foolhardy desperation for an image makeover led to the current liquor policy crisis, must have himself been taken aback by the success of his pedestrian slogan-raising for prohibition.

But the situation within the Congress-led ruling UDF is so shameful, mired in corruption, infighting and deception, that what should have been a damp squib by the KPCC president exploded like a nuclear weapon. The media played a Mephistophelian role, raising the decibel of the liquor policy discussion to hysteria because it saw a market opportunity in the puritan, sanctimonious social segments. Moral police and right-wingers of every description had a free run. Panicking politicians scampered for cover and began to talk like prohibitionists even as they were in the middle of fixing deals with the liquor lobby. The knives were out. Suddenly, it became an unspeakable crime to utter even a word in favour of liquor. It was a masterpiece of Malayali hypocrisy, with politics and media in tow.

CM Oommen Chandy saw his chair slipping away and went in for a kill that left everyone gasping. He upped the ante on Sudheeran in a way that sent even the prohibitionists reeling, coming up with a policy that would close 99 per cent of the bars and restrict alcohol sales to the sarkari outlets, which too were to be eliminated in a phased manner. Even the fact that he was cutting at the heart of Kerala’s fiscal lifeline — the tourism industry — did not deter him from pushing the state onto a ruinous economic rollercoaster to save his chair. He also closed his eyes to the very real and deadly scenario of Kerala becoming a gargantuan hub of illicit liquor and drugs.

It was almost a replay of the disastrous arrack ban in 1996, by the then CM AK Antony, which set off the avalanche of Indian made foreign liquor (IMFL) into Kerala. Not only did it not stop anyone from drinking but it also took away from the average man and the poor, the option to limit his outgo on alcohol, raising his cost per drink from around ₹6-8 to ₹60-80. Today, it is the IMFL empire that Antony established that Sudheeran — Antony’s nominee to the KPCC presidential chair — is trying to demolish with Antony’s blessings. And thereby hangs a tale of infighting in the Congress, which is too long and sordid to go into here. However, it is useful to note that Antony is currently unemployed.

The new liquor policy, a thoughtless quick-fix for immediate face-saving, is fraught with new dangers. The 418 bars — out of 731 — which were closed will now become beer and wine parlours. Unless the court decides otherwise, the state will also convert the remaining 300-odd bars the same way, creating a multi-crore rupee empire of beer and wine in Kerala, while holding on to its monopoly on hard liquor sold from its own outlets. If the government’s avowed aim in closing bars was to wean people off alcohol, the new policy will do exactly the opposite. The subtle propagation of beer and wine as ‘mild’ or ‘harmless’ alcohol will bring new customers into the bars, especially the young. Many regular drinkers will switch to the ‘mild’ alcohol, inevitably in larger quantities for better effect, resulting in higher expenditure. The drastic saturation of the market with beer and wine could trigger health imponderables that political opportunism doesn’t either understand or want to take into account. The government is cleverly opening up a massive new market of tens of thousands of crores in beer and wine in Kerala — a state where both were hardly consumed, especially wine. Given the proficiency of politicians, it cannot be as accidental as it looks. A crisis seems to have been converted into a masterpiece of opportunity. It is a charade that closely resembles Antony’s arrack ban in 1996, which created the IMFL wave in Kerala. And, given the familiar ethics of the business and political interests that rule the liquor trade, beer and wine quality is likely to plunge, while prices head north.

But look at the happiness quotient. Oommen Chandy and his ministry are still in place; the bar lobby is somewhat content; liquor manufacturers are in seventh heaven, because, as if by magic, a gigantic market for beer and wine has opened up; excise officials, police, political wheeler-dealers et al are hiccupping with laughter since it’s business as usual. And that poor oaf, the drinking Malayali, thinks he’s had a victory, though he doesn’t know what he is in for.

In the end, there are two glum faces: Sudheeran, who stands beaten but might pursue more sensational and lethal paths of confrontation depending on his mentor’s needs; and KM Mani, Kerala Congress (M) supremo and finance minister, who faces prosecution for allegedly accepting a bribe of ₹1 crore from bar owners. (Even I am ashamed to reveal the paltry figure of ₹1 crore. But in a way, it shows how modest Malayalis still are.) Mani will make good his escape like many others before him, but it seems Malayalis will never escape the recurrent cataclysms their politicians unleash upon them.

(Paul Zacharia is a bilingual author and essayist based in Thiruvananthapuram)

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