HIGH LIQUOR LEVIES LEAD TO HOOCH DEATHS

The recent hooch tragedy in UP and Uttarakhand which resulted in the death of more than 100 people has exposed the claim of the Yogi Adityanath Government that it has improved the law and order situation in the State. But so many people could not have become victims of the spurious liquor manufactured in the two States if everything was okay with the law and order machinery. Though hooch tragedies are a frequent occurrence throughout the country, no lessons seem to have been learned by the authorities. Because victims of toxic brew invariably come from the lower economic strata, these tragedies are forgotten after making headlines for a day. There is an urgent need to frame a common policy to fight the menace of underground breweries of poisonous hooch. But the problem is much deeper. The greed of the State governments to collect very high revenues from the sale of Indian-Made Foreign Liquor and the country liquor made in licensed breweries makes it so expensive that it is out of reach of the poor and underprivileged classes. Therefore, they turn to hooch bottled by criminal elements without any concern for its potability. Investigations undertaken soon after the deaths of so many people in the two states revealed that the toxic liquor had come from an underground brewery in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, whereas most of the dead belonged to Saharanpur, UP. Clearly, a network was operating in manufacturing and distributing the deadly brew in the two states. Indeed, the police does not have to work very hard to locate the illicit liquor vends in any part of the State. Because without their connivance, it would not be easy to sell the illicit liquor. But the police look the other way so long as they get their haftha regularly. Police in every state is invariably complicit in the sale of toxic hooch. A couple of years ago, there was an equally horrendous tragedy in Mumbai. One hundred and fifteen people died after drinking cheap but toxic alcohol. Technology seems to have made it further easy for the criminal elements to distribute deadly stuff in small pouches which are easy to handle. Unless state governments approach the issue from the humanitarian point of view rather than from the revenue point there would be no end to these tragedies. It is hard to wean away the poor from cheap liquor. The solution lies in opening State-owned vends for the sale of clean but cheap liquor. For this to be done, State governments will have to forgo the huge revenue they collect from the IMFL and country liquor. While the IMFL can be left untouched, the licensed sale of country liquor needs to attract nominal taxes. If this is done, the number of such hooch tragedies which result in periodic deaths will be reduced appreciably.