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Bar owners brew trouble for Kerala government

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

The bar owners in Kerala have risen against the state government's move to replace the illuminated diamond-shaped 'Bar' boards with unimpressive black ones.

Following a petition from an owner, K Kuriakose in Kochi, the high court has barred the authorities from removing old boards of the bar run by him.

The bar owners in most cities were reluctant to remove the boards. It would be difficult for people to distinguish bars in crowded localities without these, they claimed.

The yellow boards, mostly placed atop the building housing the bar, indeed made identification of such joints easy.

The excise inspectors have already started replacing the diamond-shaped boards with black ones in most cities and towns. Excise Commissioner J Lalithambika has asked them to complete the operation within a month.

The new boards with 'Bar' written in white letters also contain the statutory warning that consumption of alcohol is injurious to health.

The excise commissioner ordered the old boards removed as it not only lured people to bars but led to accidents too. Most bar owners were found using the advertisements supplied by liquor companies freely. The excise authorities felt that this distracted people, leading to accidents.

Excise sources said the step was in the light of competition by bar owners to make their boards and advertisements more attractive.

Bars in Kerala are engaged in a tough competition following the ban of arrack by the previous Congress-led government headed by A K Antony in 1996. Sales of Indian made foreign liquor have been on the rise since then.

Statistics supplied by the Kerala State Beverages Corporation have it that IMFL sales shot up by 80 per cent in 1997-98 over the previous year's. The sales almost doubled in 1998-99. It went up from 320,0000 cases to 620,0000 cases. This has made Kerala the second among the states in India in liquor consumption.

Kerala is close to Tamil Nadu in the rank of states with the highest per capita consumption of liquor. While the drinking population in Tamil Nadu consumes 8.4 full bottles a year, his counterpart in Kerala consumes eight full bottles. Punjab, which had topped the table, has come down to just five bottles per person a year.

The per capita consumption is worked out after excluding people above the age of 60, women and children from the drinking population. The IMFL sales are projected to touch 660,0000 cases in Kerala in the current financial year.

There has been a boom in the sales of cheap brands. While the share of such in the total market were negligible before the arrack ban, it shot up to 19 per cent share in 1998-99. It is estimated to go up to 25 per cent in the current fiscal.

The quantum jump in IMFL sales has helped the government make good the loss it suffered in revenue as a result of the arrack ban. While the revenue loss due to the ban was Rs.3 billion, the state has been getting more than Rs 5 billion from the increase in the IMFL sales by way of excise duty.

Private studies show that Keralaites spend more on liquor than on rice. A study conducted by the Desiya Vedi, a socio-cultural outfit of the Congress, revealed that liquor accounted for 19 per cent of the per capita expenditure as against 16 per cent for rice.

Knowledgeable sources say the figures for liquor consumption are not totally reliable since there is a strong network of illicit outlets in the state. While the banned arrack itself has reappeared in different new forms, foreign liquor from low tax areas like Mahe, Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu have been flowing freely across.

KSBC sources believe that a parallel distilling industry is active in the state with the active connivance of excise officials and politicians. Raids conducted in recent times had brought to light incriminating documents showing this unholy nexus.

A raid in Pathanamthitta district, for instance, threw up a well-maintained register showing the payments political leaders of different hues and excise officials of different ranks.

Unfortunately, investigations into most such cases have met premature ends at the lowest level.

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