By Vikram Kilpady
The news cycle has been on hyper-drive over the Aam Aadmi Party leadership’s tryst with the new excise policy, which has seen former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia being jailed along with others for bureaucratic hanky panky. Given the intense media lens on Delhi’s now defunct excise policy, neighbouring Haryana’s new excise policy has been given a relative cold shoulder. The Manohar Lal Khattar government has brought in sweeping changes in its excise policy which will be effective from June 12, 2023, to June 11, 2024.
Apart from the hikes in prices of liquor brands, the Haryana excise policy allows corporate offices with a lakh square feet, some 5,000 employees and a 2,000 square feet canteen to set up “taverns” for their employees. A large number of multinationals, ranging from automobiles to consulting, have set up shop in Haryana, particularly in Gurugram, Faridabad, Sonipat and Panchkula districts. These taverns can serve ready-to-drink beverages, such as Bacardi Breezers or Jack Daniels Whisky and Cola, to name a few, beer and wine. The policy doesn’t stipulate how many units can be sold to a person within the office complex, leaving it to tavern minders and bouncers (we hope) to keep track.
Like in all things bureaucratic and Indian, the policy goes to great lengths in describing the conditions for setting up the tavern. Like how it should not be in a thoroughfare, like how people outside should not be able to see inside, like how it shall be enclosed, and what not. But it doesn’t cap how many bottles of, say Breezers or beers, can a man or a woman buy. Nor does the policy even mention what happens if an inebriated employee meets with an accident on the roads after losing control at the wheel. Who will indemnify the cattle owner, what about the other motorist who might sustain injuries, many resulting even in death, in such a crash? The notion of “drink responsibly” doesn’t cover the hangover like truths staring at the policy’s face. But given the tedium that offices usually descend into, a newspaper middle wondered if human resources departments should buy embittered employees a drink, and booze out attrition instead of happy birthday emails, a de rigueur HR tokenism in most offices.
Fast flowering urbanisation in Gurugram has forced the state to move liquor consumption out of rustic hole-in-the-wall shacks to air-conditioned shops in malls with displays that could rival TV showrooms. The taverns are nudging into extinction the ahatas, the tin-roofed, ramshackle brick structures squeezing up behind vends, where the harried, the rushed and the poor go to consume the liquor that gets them about the day or night. If you could drink at work, why stop at the liquor shops that now proliferate along the highways, unless it is for yet another one-for-the-road?
Liquor consumption doesn’t affect everyone equally. Some drink heavy, they are true epicures, having arrived at the exact measure they require, and the hangover antidote to accompany it. Until recently, it was an accepted norm that two 45 ml drinks of hard liquor or less was a safe daily intake for men, and one 45 ml portion, or less, of hard liquor was a safe daily amount for women. So said the United States’ National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which also defines a standard drink as referring to 350 ml beer with 5% alcohol, or 150 ml table wine, or 45 ml spirits (rum, whisky, vodka, gin, etc).
In India, the maximum beer sales are in the strong category, which means approximately 8% alcohol. Besides, hard liquor doesn’t come in 45 ml bottles, the smallest being the 180 ml, which translates to four 45 ml drinks, well over the legal limit. Though miniatures of 60 ml are available, nobody lands in tipsy territory for downing just one. Imagine all these people behind the wheels of their respective cars, heading home or elsewhere with their heads liquor lightened and, hence, hard to keep. Most insurance companies deny claims if the insured driver has had some alcohol, until a victim sues them.
On alcohol consumption in India, a Deutsche Welle report in 2022 quoted a Lancet study which said the highest consumption of alcohol was among men in the 40-64 age group and in the 15-39 age group, the increase in both groups was under 6% over 30 years. Similarly, a National Family Health Survey showed alcohol consumption was higher in rural areas than in cities. The damage that alcohol addiction subjects people and their families to are painfully chronicled on Twitter by a hepatologist who styles himself TheLiverDoc and lists an array of families left devastated by the loss of a breadwinner or a child of elderly parents, etc.
The spike in liquor consumption over 30 years, as found by The Lancet, coincides with liberalisation, but it should not be the sole factor to blame. The Indian State’s relationship with liquor has been moralistic right from 1947. Article 47 of the Constitution mandates health as a directive principle to the State, requiring it to promote health and endeavour to bring about prohibition of intoxicating drinks and drugs. Gujarat has been more or less dry for many decades now, at least on paper. Tales of cars stocked with the latest bootlegged alcohol tucked away in the glove compartment and under the seats, all for a meagre Rs 100 markup, has left bootlegging a viable economic activity in the state. On the other side of India, Bihar enforces its prohibition with gusto, leading to such a pile-up of prosecution that the courts have thrown up their hands. Bootleggers have a field day, police in the state have submitted in court that bandicoots drank up all liquor confiscated from smugglers, all with a straight face.
Consider the other group of states that milk (no pun intended) the tippler’s addiction to its maximum. Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala and Goa have been laughing their way to the bank as alcoholism exerts a python-like grip around citizens. Especially after the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax regime, state governments have been sore at being excluded from direct revenue in any field barring liquor and fuel. Since the Central GST remittances have been delayed several times over, the states push liquor as one way out to corner revenue which need not be shared. Therefore, arrive the reports of record-breaking sales of liquor in BEVCO in Kerala and TASMAC in Tamil Nadu after every festival or so. Christmas hic! Deepavali hic! Delhi was also in the throes of buy-one, get-one-free dipsomania until the excise policy was put on hold in another Delhi government versus centre control battle.
Alcohol abuse and addiction are visible devils plaguing Indian men and women. The token slogan of “drink responsibly” is not enough to get alcohol companies off the hook. As with cigarettes, alcohol also needs aggressive countermeasures. Alcohol companies should visit companies and instead of giving free samples, get a few of their brand ambassadors to speak on the perils of overindulgence. It’s in their interest that people continue to enjoy their whisky and not end up in hospitals with severe, life-threatening ailments.
For people unable to make sense of their alcohol intake, please listen to Episode 86 on the podcast Huberman Lab, which deals with what alcohol does to your body, brain and health. It’s an hour or so and is on Spotify. For those who want to kick the habit, the support system is available in the form of a range of de-addiction centres and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings. The 12-step programme of AA derives its entire basis from Christian scripture. Unfortunately, Hindutva organisations have not come up with a de-addiction programme yet. Maybe, it is time they did because as more Indians age, the healthcare costs are going to only go up.
At the outset, the new Haryana liquor policy looks modern and liberal, but what it hides is normalising alcohol in one’s life, since it legitimises companies letting their employees drink on office premises. Imagine the large number of people who will drink for the first time since all is a-ok.
Haryana has other problems to address. It topped the country’s unemployment figures in December 2022 in a survey conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. The figure stood at 37.4%, nearly 4 out of 10 unemployed, followed by Rajasthan at 28 %. It has random murders of Muslims for alleged cow smuggling, homicides carried out by people turbo-charged on super-strong beer. Prohibition is not the answer, nor is abstinence. Individually, discipline is necessary, most when one lets their hair down. Maybe state governments should possibly jack up tax on liquor, instead of the very high levies on petrol, diesel, CNG, LPG etc. In consonance with the Union government, of course.