BackPressure builds up on Maharashtra govt for total liquor prohibition
If liquor is banned, Maharashtra stands to lose `13,500 crore in excise duty and `8,000 crore in value-added tax, adding up to `21,500 crore
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Mumbai: After Bihar, could it be Maharashtra?
Pressure is building on the Maharashtra government ban liquor after Bihar announced prohibition from 1 April 2016.
A day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar declared prohibition, Maharashtra revenue and excise minister Eknath Khadse said prohibition is not on the Maharashtra government’s agenda “for now" but added that the government would respect “public sentiment".
Khadse also said the state will have to consider the revenue loss due to prohibition. If liquor is banned, Maharashtra stands to lose ₹ 13,500 crore in excise duty and ₹ 8,000 crore in value-added tax, adding up to ₹ 21,500 crore.
Till the end of September, the state has collected more than ₹ 5,351 crore out of the targeted ₹ 13,500-crore liquor excise duty for this year and is on course to meet the target, according to an excise department official, who did not want to be identified.
Three districts in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region—Wardha, Gadchiroli, and Chandrapur—already have prohibition in place. In Wardha, prohibition is in force since 1950, after Mahatma Gandhi’s work in the district prompted his followers to demand prohibition as a mark of respect for him. Gadchiroli, which has been witnessing a Naxal insurgency since the 1980s was declared dry in 1992. In April 2015, the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government announced prohibition in Chandrapur district after a fierce agitation by social organisations and resolutions passed unanimously by more than 500 of the total 800 gram panchayats in the district demanding prohibition.
After Bihar decided to go dry, there have been fresh demands for total or partial prohibition in the state. Abhay Bang—an internationally-acclaimed Gandhian whose model in Gadchiroli to reduce infant mortality rate was adopted by the government—is a votary of prohibition.
Bang has written to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis requesting complete prohibition. Bang, who runs a project called Society for Education, Action, and Research in Community Health (SEARCH) in Gadchiroli, concedes that total prohibition is not a perfect way to accomplish freedom from liquor.
“But total prohibition through legal means is a necessary tool to achieve incremental reduction in consumption of liquor. If you ask me if prohibition has been a total success in Gadchiroli district, I would ask you a counter-question. Which of the government schemes or programmes has been a total success? But does that mean we should not have poverty elimination or social welfare programmes?" he asked.
He conceded that the argument about losing revenue had some merit but cited two studies, one by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the other by the Bengaluru-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience (NIMHANS) to counter the logic advanced by the government.
He said the WHO study estimated that the actual spend on consumption of liquor in India was four times more than the revenue government collected from sale of liquor because of the highly unregulated industry. “Which means people in Maharashtra spend nearly Rs.50,000 crore on liquor every year. The WHO asked if this was a healthy revenue to collect for a developing country like India," Bang said.
The NIMHANS study, which calculated the societal cost of liquor consumption, said the society pays a much higher cost than the revenue the government collects on account of death, disease, destitution, social disorders and law and order due to liquor consumption.
In Chandrapur, Paromita Goswami, founder of Shramik Elgar had led the call for prohibition. She said prohibition is working better in the rural parts of the district, but blamed the government for lack of follow-up measures to make it a success. “There is only one forensic lab in Vidarbha in Nagpur. So, the chemical analysis reports do not come in time. Also, the government promised a dedicated police team to lead the prohibition programme, but it has not been set up despite the chief minister holding the home ministry," Goswami said.
She supported the call for total prohibition in Maharashtra and said the argument about revenue loss was irrational because the money people would save if there was prohibition would ultimately flow into the economy itself.
Kishor Tiwari, a farmers’ leader from Vidarbha has demanded prohibition in at least 14 districts of Vidarbha and Marathwada where farm suicides have been reported. Ashish Deshmukh, a BJP legislator, too, has written to the chief minister seeking a ban on liquor.
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