Parallax View: When is it okay to allow people to drink?

On the grounds that you are as bored as I am of reading the same columns about the same issues – the

government’s clash with Anna Hazare’s people, the collapse of Ramdev’s agitation, the impending collapse of the Manmohan Singh administration, etc.

– week after week, I thought I would focus on something different this weekend: the Maharashtra government’s decision to raise the drinking age to 25. At first glance this might seem like a slightly frivolous issue to focus on at a time when a state of paralysis grips our government but as we shall see, it is really not that frivolous a matter but a symbol of the way in which Indian politics functions.

 

   Let’s first start by giving the Maharashtra government the benefit of the doubt. There are traditionally three sets of grounds on which laws concerned alcohol consumption are based. Let’s see if this decision fulfills any of those criteria.

 

   The first ground concerns the ill-effects of alcohol. Many people – Mahatma Gandhi and Morarji Desai, for instance – regarded alcohol as a terrible evil from which society had to be protected. Gandhiji believed in prohibition, that is to say, a total ban on all sale and consumption of alcohol. While this view has now fallen out of favour, there are still those who believe in prohibition and the state of Gujarat enforces one version of prohibition.

 

   But the Maharashtra government’s decision on drinking age cannot be based on any Gandhian argument. If Maharashtra believed that alcohol was bad then it would impose total prohibition. Instead, it has historically been at the forefront of liberalising liquor licensing laws. Sharad Pawar, the state’s political strongman, regularly talks about opening wine bars in Bombay and creating a Napa Valley in Maharashtra.

 

   Naturally, there are commercial considerations at work. Pawar owns vineyards and so do many other Maharashtra politicians. The sugar cooperatives that are the backbone of Maratha politics in the state often make alcohol which they sell to liquor companies. So, the prohibition argument will not work here.

 

   There is a second ground which is often used to justify laws aimed at personal consumption. For instance, extreme liberals argue that the state has no business making heroin consumption a crime. If I want to inject myself with heroin and destroy my life, then this is my business. I have every right to damage myself as part of my personal freedom.

 

   This is an extreme argument and is usually countered by pointing to the dangers to society. You may well have a right to destroy your own life with heroin but the fact is that heroin addicts turn to crime and tend to damage society and harm innocent people. So a ban on substances is justified – in philosophical terms – by pointing to the dangers those substances and their consumption would pose to society not just to the consumer himself.

 

   In some ways, this is not very different from the prohibition argument. But it is often used by supporters of prohibition. We have forgotten this now but in 1976, during the Emergency, Indira Gandhi called for total prohibition. Her justification was that men would get drunk and then beat up their wives. So, prohibition was justified as a way of protecting women.

 

   I don’t think this is a very strong argument (and when Mrs Gandhi returned to power in 1980 she quietly dropped the proposal). But in any case, it is not one that is available to the Maharashtra government. To argue that you are protecting society from the actions of drunkards, you would have to ban all drinking not just raise the drinking age. Moreover, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that crimes are committed by drunken youths between the ages of 21 to 25 and that, therefore, they should be denied access to alcohol.

 

   That leaves the third argument: maturity. All of us accept that certain things that are considered normal and entirely acceptable in the adult world should be denied to children. Most of us would be appalled to see an 11 year old watching a porn movie. Or a ten year old smoking a cigarette. So yes, there are strong grounds for banning under-age drinking.

 

"That such an absurd law for which there is no moral justification, can be put in place tells us something about the way India is run."

   But the question is: what is the right age? When is it okay to allow people to drink?

 

   One way of doing this would be to look at age limits in other areas. By the time you are 21, the law recognises you as an adult. You can get married, run a business, join the army, elect your government and do nearly everything else that an adult can. So why should drinking be an exception? Why should you have to wait another four years before you can legally get a drink?

 

   It is a reasonable point and one that has been made again and again by sensible people. If the Maharashtra government believes that alcohol will lead to dangers to society when it is in the hands of the under-25s, then it should extend that argument to other areas. If a 24 year old poses a danger when he opens a bottle of beer then surely he poses a greater danger when he is out driving on the road? And surely, he is at his most dangerous when he is given weapons to handle? And yet, 24 year olds are routinely allowed to handle lethal weapons in the army and the police.

 

   I’ve been waiting to see what explanation the Maharashtra government can offer. So far, it has come up with zilch. I watched the concerned minister on Headlines Today and it took 30 seconds to work out that he was a nitwit, incapable of formulating a sentence, let alone an argument. Even the chief minister has indicated that there is a case for debating the rise in drinking age.

 

   But the truth is we all know why the drinking age has been raised. Some of you may be old enough to remember the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act or FERA as it used to be called. This act was framed so narrowly that every single Indian who went abroad became a FERA violator. The government did not prosecute all of us, of course, but it knew that it had the right to lock us up when it wanted to.

 

   Except, of course, that it didn’t want to lock us up. Successful prosecutions under FERA were rare. Usually, the authorities would threaten an individual with prosecution and would then indicate that they were willing to let the matter drop if bribes were paid. Fearful of spending a long time in jail because of some crime that nobody even knew was a crime, most people paid up. India gained nothing from FERA. But many ministers and officials gained a lot. In fact, they became very rich men.

 

   The liquor licensing laws operate on the same principle. Anybody who runs a bar or a restaurant in India will tell you the same story: of the endless bribes paid to excise officials; of the constant threat of police raids; and of the continual harassment by the authorities. Wine merchants have it even worse. If you are in the wine business in India, then you are either a crook or you are bankrupt.

 

   All of us know that 21 year olds are going to continue to drink. We know that the law cannot be enforced on a systematic basis. But here’s what it does do: it gives the policeman or an excise official the right to walk into a bar and to tell the owner that his license is being suspended because a 24 year old is drinking a Bacardi breezer. Naturally, the bar owner will pay whatever bribes are asked for. If the 24 year old looks affluent, he will be dragged off to the police station and his parents will be shaken down for Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 before he is allowed to go.

 

   Like FERA, this law pretends to protect society. In actual fact, it only enriches politicians, policemen and bureaucrats.

 

   I began by saying that the subject was not as frivolous as it might appear. That such an absurd law for which there is no moral justification, can be put in place tells us something about the way India is run. As far as our politicians and administrators are concerned, the law is no more than a way of making money. The Constitution is a giant ATM. And you and I are the bakras who get cheated and robbed again and again.