The protagonists of conversion–reconversion debates may
kindly enlighten us Keralites as to the way in which we can convert out of our
Malayalee provinciality.
Kerala, the great land of paradoxes, is today a fertile
ground of hypocrisy and malarkey. This ‘enlightened’ state could be first or
second in the pecking order of alcohol consumption, but still wants to give out
an impression that prohibition is its guiding spirit. As politicians play to
the gallery, all the institutions want to prove the point that the Malayalee
loves only milk and honey.
Alcohol, IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) as the Malayalee
would love to call it, is the top contributor to the government kitty: around
Rs 10,000 crore annually. Every year, the government would hike the tax on
liquor to extract the maximum. Still, it vouches before the masses that the
cardinal objective is to make the Malayalee a teetotaler.
As things stand, Kerala will have only five-star bars. If an
average mallu wants to consume IMFL, after procuring a bottle in these trying
times (the average waiting time in the queue at state-run liquor outlets is 45
minutes) it has to be in a mobile bar. Already, he has innovated to convert his
autorickshaw into a bar. The government sells the booze, but doesn’t permit him
to consume it peacefully under a roof.
weapon. AK Antony used it on a mass scale in Kerala when he
banned the cheap liquor, arrack, in 1995. It did not fetch him the desired
votes. The Left and Right which came to power since couldn’t pull the plug
fearing religious fatwas. The state has become a land of IMFL
and bars the most profitable proposition of a thriving consumer society.
All the studies have proved one point: the arrack ban made
the average mallu poorer as he had to shell out almost ten times more to get
the same kick. After two decades, disciples of Antony are serving the same wine in a
different bottle, which has been hailed by religious leaders and granted a
stamp of approval by the judiciary.
Prohibition as a policy tool is a failure world over. Still,
the Malayalee wants to believe that he is an exception. This is where the land
of paradoxes turns to be the quagmire of malarkey. The devotees of Church who
are served with endless ‘pastoral letters’ lead the tippler list.
Still our clergy thinks that at the stroke on order one can
change his mindset. The toddy shops in Kerala sell twenty times more than the
total production of toddy – the deficit is made up by a chemical powder – and
we tend to believe that illicit liquor will never invade us fearing the khaki
and boots.
Centuries old reformation movements made the Malayalee a
unique species. He attained impeccable social indices of the West with hardly
one-twentieth of the per capita income. The huge social investment coupled with
egalitarian imbibing helped him cross the seas to fish for fortunes.
All these feats are getting drowned in the whirlpool of
hypocrisy as he tends to feast on abject contradictions. He is the one who
leaves a Rs 1,000 per day job to the Bengali immigrant and travels all the way
to Saudi Arabia
for a monthly salary of 750 riyals (Rs 12,000).
He is the one who props up the decadent fleet of Kerala
State Road Transport Corporation by paying more than Rs 100 crore monthly in
the form of tax and still roots for his own state-run airline. The protagonists
of conversion–reconversion debates may kindly enlighten us Keralites as to the
way in which we can convert out of our mallu provinciality.
http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-commentary/alcohol-has-always-been-a-political-weapon-in-kerala/
