The total prohibition route cannot work

Bihar’s watering down of the drinking ban must be backed by awareness campaigns

Facing a backlash over the misuse of the law, particularly the draconian provisions of the liquor prohibition bill, the Bihar government on Monday passed amendments to the stringent Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016. According to the amended law, instead of undergoing a five-year jail term, a first-time offender will be able to walk free after paying a fine of ~50,000. The amended provisions also do away with a collective penalty on a group of people or residents of a village if they are found to be repeat offenders.

This is a political U-turn of sorts for chief minister Nitish Kumar, an ardent advocate of total prohibition. Just last year, Mr Kumar had said the liquor ban had helped bring down the crime rate in the state. In December, he had called for a nationwide ban on the sale of alcohol. According to government figures, since April 2016, 1,41,861 people have been arrested for breaking the prohibition law in the state. More than 8,000 are still behind bars. Some of the harsher provisions of Bihar’s anti-prohibition law, in which entire villages could be held culpable if someone who lived there was caught drinking, were criticised by many. Anyone who allowed drinkers to gather at his house, for instance, was punished with a minimum eight-year jail term extendable to 10 years with a fine of up to ~10 lakh. To rule that all adult members of a house can be punished if even one person stores or consumes liquor was seen to be against the tenets of criminal jurisprudence. Penalising so many people is undemocratic and futile. A parallel economy of bootleggers simply takes away the revenue from the government .

Instead of taking the total prohibition route, the State could consider launching awareness campaigns that drive home the demerits of irresponsible drinking. This must be approached from a medical perspective, not a moral one.