Kerala Goes Dry State….

After Gujarat’s ban on sale and production of liquor, it’s Kerala that has banned the sale of Liquor.

The Kerala government recently placed a ban on the sale of liquor, everywhere except for in selective five star hotels in Kerala. This led to a lot of rage among the drinkers specially the middle class.

Then I wondered that was it really a worth to go step.

We know Kerala from our very childhood as the dream state where there is high literacy, high human development. It is one of the states that rarely come in Headlines for its bad. But the recent ban has disturbed Kerala.

According to me the recent liquor ban in Kerala is yet another example of the oppression that still exists in our country. I personally feel, banning something is a too extreme step. To limit or restrict the production or distribution of alcohol in the state would have been a wiser step to take. Ours is a democracy, and it is important that the citizens of our country are left with the freedom to make these choices for themselves. Encouraging such a thing would be synonymous to encouraging oppression.

Banning the sale of liquor everywhere, but in the five star hotels in Kerala, will certainly ensure that the people who belong to the lower middle class families do not spend there income on something as unnecessary as alcohol. But do we want the government to have that kind of control over us?

It is definitely a step that will help reduce the ill effects of alcohol because enabling the sale of alcohol only in five star hotels will make people think twice before they resort to alcohol, because not everyone can afford the exorbitant prices charged by the five star hotels. While, its important to ensure that lower middle class families in our country do not fall prey to problems such as alcoholism, it is also important that the government does not have undue power over its citizens.

The state should have increased the taxes on liquor making it as expensive as it is in the five star hotels. This would have helped government to collect revenue and at the same time reduce consumption. Ban is not entirely a bad thing, but limiting the sale of alcohol instead of banning would certainly have been the right thing to do. This ban will further escalate the problems of smuggling and illegal selling which is far more difficult to control.

(Shreya Karunakaram)