Is prohibition a Bihar poll issue?

The prohibition move was received very well initially but fizzled out in less than a year with the police
unable to stop the import of liquor from neighboring states like UP, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Nepal.

Though Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar now discusses the liquor ban once in a while during his
meetings, it was his main political plank when he had been a part of the UPA. He brought about a total
liquor ban in April 2016 and looked to cater to his bigger constituency of women, several of whom had
complained about domestic violence by their husbands under the influence of liquor.

The move was received very well initially but fizzled out in less than a year with the police unable to stop
the import of liquor from neighboring states like UP, West Bengal, Jharkhand and also Nepal as eight
Bihar districts adjoin the Himalayan country. Prohibition is hardly an issue in this election.

Nitish Kumar tries to cater to the women vote bank by talking about liquor but he is greeted with
complaints of failure of prohibition and several women groups narrating how their husbands buy sub-
standard liquor at thrice the price.

While putting up posters for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Wednesday, the ruling Janata Dal-
United (JD-U) sought to make Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s ambitious anti-liquor programme a poll issue
in the dry State. Opposition leaders, on the other hand, alleged that prohibition would have an “adverse
impact” on the ruling alliance in the elections. Illicit liquor continues to be seized from different parts of
the State in trucks and vans laden with oranges, potatoes and gas cylinders.

“Hamara sankalp sharab mukt, dahej mukt…bal-vivah mukt rashtra (Our resolve is liquor free, dowry
free…child marriage free nation),” said one of the huge posters put up by the ruling JD(U) outside the
party’s office in Patna on Wednesday.

The posters feature smiling pictures of party president Nitish Kumar along with R.C.P. Singh and Basistha
Narayan Singh. “Yes, the liquor ban by our government will be an effective poll issue in the coming Lok
Sabha election and our party leaders will take this to the voters…it has made a drastic change in the
social milieu of the State, especially in rural areas,” said JD(U) leader and party spokesperson Neeraj
Kumar. Other party leaders, too, asserted that the ban of liquor was a “revolutionary step” by the Nitish
Kumar-led government and, “It will definitely be a poll issue.”

However, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Congress leaders said that prohibition would be an issue in the
upcoming Lok Sabha polls but for “different reasons.”

“What kind of liquor ban is in the State when people say liquor is available at their doorstep in the black
market? Recently, we have read a series of reports in newspapers and heard [that] drunk people [are]
firing in celebration during marriage ceremonies, killing spectators and relatives…the issue may have a
reverse impact on the ruling party,” senior RJD leader and party vice president Shivanand Tiwari told The
Hindu.
Similarly, senior State Congress leader and party MLC Prem Chandra Mishra said, “In the name of
prohibition, people from only the poor and lower strata were arrested and sent to jail…and who doesn’t
know liquor is freely available in every corner of the State in the black market?”

“Ban on daaru aur baalu (liquor and sand) will cost dearly in the LS poll for the ruling alliance,” said RJD
leader and party spokesperson Bhai Birendra.

The Nitish Kumar government enforced a total ban on liquor in the State from April 5, 2016 through the
Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016. Earlier, the Act had stringent provisions of punishment but in
June 2018, the State amended some of the provisions criticised as draconian, with allegations of the
harassment of common people by government officials under the guise of the new Prohibition Act.

Mr. Kumar had been reiterating that the ban on liquor has brought a “social transformation and poor
families have benefited the most from it.” However, later reports alleged that people from the poor and
lower strata of society had been sent to jail under the Act. “It seems only poor people were drinking
liquor in the State…the rich and upper caste people have been drinking apple or orange juice….have you
heard of any upper caste man or official in the State being caught and sent to jail under the anti-liquor
Act?” asked Ram Jivan Manjhi, a Dalit activist from Gaya.

Meanwhile, liquor bottles continue to be seized from trucks and vans laden with oranges, potatoes and
gas cylinders from different parts of the State. On March 12, illicit liquor bottles worth ₹20 lakh were
seized from a truck in the Gopalgunj district, which was laden with potatoes. Similarly, 300 liquor
cartons worth ₹30 lakh was seized from a truck stuffed with an orange consignment on March 6 from
the same Gopalganj district.

Sources say illicit liquor bottles funelled into the State reach buyers in ambulances, postal vans, truck
and cycle tubes, empty gas cylinders, school bags and other ‘innovative’ means. Nearly 15 lakh litres of
Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and 8 lakh litres of country-made liquor have been seized in the
State, said an Excise Department official.

“Consuming or supplying liquor is now not only a violation of the model code of conduct but a criminal
act that can land one in jail,” said the State’s Additional Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Singh.

So far, over 2.7 lakh people have been arrested under the law, though most of them are out on bail. The
state government has already softened sterner sections of the law such as arresting all majors of the
family if one is arrested for consuming, selling or storing liquor among others. Self-help groups still try to
portray prohibition as an election issue but it is not cutting much ice in these polls. The seizure of 10 lakh
liters of liquor in last three months tells the reality of prohibition
Her husband tried his best to dissuade her but Sakshi Devi, 30, had made up her mind. Armed with
sticks, vessels and brooms, nearly 150 determined women waited outside her home in a remote village
in southwestern Bihar. Sakshi Devi (name changed) reached out for the belan (rolling pin) in her kitchen
and marched out of the house to join them. “We had run out of patience,” she said. “The liquor shop
near the village had to go.”

The liquor shop, about a kilometre from her home and in one of the bazaars on the outskirts of Sasaram
town in Rohtas district, used to bustle with male customers from several neighbouring villages, said
Sakshi Devi. “It had become a ritual,” she said. “Get drunk and create nuisance at home. We could not
take it anymore.”

The women, many of them Dalits, marched in rage to ambush the liquor vendor at his shop. “He pleaded
with us,” Sakshi Devi recalled with a glint in her eye. “A festival was around the corner, which would
have meant more sales. He promised to close the shop after the festival. But we did not budge. We went
back only after padlocking the shutter.”

That was 2013. The liquor shop never reopened. Today, a quiet fodder shop occupies that space.

The fodder shop that replaced the liquor store in Sasaram. About 150 women from villages around it
had forcefully shut it down in 2013 because men would come home drunk and beat their wives.

Over the next two years, Sakshi Devi and the women around her village participated in agitations in
Sasaram under the banner of Pragatisheel Mahila Manch (progressive women’s forum) founded by
Sunita Devi, 50, who had mobilised women in the shuttering of the liquor shop. “The response was
overwhelming,” she said. “Not just Sasaram, such agitations took place in other parts of Bihar too. The
demand was simple: complete liquor ban in Bihar.”

On April 1, 2016, chief minister Nitish Kumar declared Bihar a dry state, following in the footsteps of
Gujarat, Mizoram, Nagaland and Lakshadweep. The CM enforced a five-year jail term even for first time
offenders before amending the rule in 2018 to introduce a fine for first-time offenders.

Four years since the announcement, and in the run-up to the state assembly election, IndiaSpend
explores in a two-part series the impact of prohibition on Bihar’s people and economy. While the
National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data show a decline in cases of domestic abuse usually fuelled by
alcohol consumption, as we explain later, prohibition has also had unintended consequences: A parallel
economy of illicit liquor trade is flourishing in Bihar even as the state is losing out on revenue from
alcohol sales. Bootleggers are selling alcohol at a higher price, pushing the poor towards cheap drugs
and hooch.

The police crackdown on prohibition violators has also affected the marginalised sections of the society
disproportionately.

In this story, the first in the series, we look at how prohibition changed the lives of the state’s women--
bettering some lives but creating new problems for others.

Prohibition came at a cost

Ahead of the state elections in 2015, chief minister Nitish Kumar had promised a complete liquor ban in
Bihar. In a way, he was promising to undo his own decision: In 2006, during his first of three consecutive
terms as chief minister, he had liberalised the state’s liquor economy, making a policy decision to open
liquor shops in every panchayat. In 2005-06, the state collected Rs 87.18 crore from Indian-made foreign
liquor. In 2014-15, the collections rose to Rs 1,777 crore--a 1938% rise.

The Janata Dal (United) led by Nitish Kumar swept the 2015 state assembly polls in alliance with Lalu
Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal, ensuring a third consecutive term for the chief minister. Popular
wisdom attributed his win to the support of women pushing for prohibition in the state.

But the change came at a cost. In 2014-15, Bihar made over Rs 3,100 crore from the sale of liquor
through excise duty, according to the Economic Survey of 2016. The budgeted estimate for 2015-16 was
Rs 4,000 crore, as per the survey.

Since then, the state has been losing out on all potential revenue from alcohol sales. But that does not
mean the state has stopped drinking, said Sunita Devi of the women’s forum. “Much like other states
with prohibition, the liquor ban has not managed to keep Bihar dry,” she said. “Alcohol is being
delivered to people’s doorsteps. And with assembly elections around the corner, the enforcement of the
ban is being put to test.”

Sakshi Devi was 23 when she participated in the Sasaram agitation. Her three children were aged five,
four and three. “Two of them are boys,” she said. “I did not want them to grow up seeing their father
creating a scene after getting drunk. Boys often emulate their fathers. He was not setting the right
example for them. I did not want my boys to grow up to be abusive husbands.”

Sunita Devi walking with two women who shuttered the liquor shop in Sasaram in 2013.

Domestic violence down

For Sakshi Devi and the other women who participated in the 2013-2015 agitations, the liquor ban has
yielded mixed results. “Alcohol is easily available for anyone who wants to drink,” she said. “Still there
are instances of domestic violence. But it is not as brazen as it used to be.”

In the old days, women were beaten up by alcoholic husbands even for complaining about the lack of
food or money at home, said Sakshi Devi. “If he earned Rs 300 as daily wages, he would splurge half of it
on alcohol,” she said. “How am I supposed to run the household with the remaining money? How to buy
books for kids? How to buy medicines? How to buy food grains? And when I pointed this out, it would
suddenly become my fault. That was the atmosphere in which kids in Bihar grew up.”

Sandhya Kumari (name changed), 20, in the group nodded in agreement. “The situation at home is
relatively calmer these days,” she said. “Earlier, I would skip a heartbeat every time my father returned
home late at night. I could not concentrate on my studies. I could not read. I would only worry about my
mother.”

Even though alcohol is available now, it is more expensive because it is illegal, as we said. “My father can
no longer afford to drink as regularly,” said Sandhya. “We have dinner together these days. He asks
about my studies. We have also been saving up more. There are odd rough days. But the frequency is
not as much as it used to be.”

A World Health Organization fact sheet links intimate partner violence to alcohol consumption,
“especially at harmful and hazardous levels”. It cites a multi-country study in Chile, Egypt, India and the
Philippines that “identified regular alcohol consumption by the husband or partner as a risk factor for
any lifetime physical intimate partner violence across all four study countries”.

In Bihar, cases of domestic violence under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (cruelty by the
husband or his relatives) fell 37% since the liquor ban, while the crime rate--or cases per 100,000
women--fell 45%. Countrywide, during the same period, cases rose 12% and the crime rate rose 3%.
However, the data needs to be read with a few caveats, said Prashanti (she uses one name) of Gender
Alliance, a non-profit organisation that works for gender equality in Bihar. “Alcohol usually works as a
trigger for domestic violence,” she said. “But we have seen families where men drink and do not beat up
their wives and we have also seen cases where even teetotallers are abusive husbands. More
importantly, the NCRB data only includes reported cases. Most times, the woman does not lodge an
official complaint against the husband because the police are non-cooperative and the patriarchal
society we live in blames her.”

Economic slump, joblessness bigger worries now

Despite the drop in domestic violence, Nitish Kumar is not wholly popular among women, said Sunita
Devi. “First of all, it is not a complete liquor ban [liquor is easily available],” she said. “Secondly, that is
not the only job of the chief minister. Who will provide work? Who will look after the workforce? A
woman has to run the household.”

Most of the women we spoke to run their homes with the wages their husbands make from labour
work, which is dwindling because of agrarian distress worsened by the lockdown. “Farmers in Bihar are
struggling so they cannot employ labourers at a decent wage,” said Sakshi Devi. “Therefore, those who
can, migrate out of the state. The rest, like my husband, toil hours and get little in return. Little is being
done to improve the quality of life of people like us. The chief minister should be responsible for
employment and education as well. He cannot expect our votes on the basis of a poorly executed liquor
ban.”

The state government of Bihar, though, has come up with a report card on prohibition, claiming that the
policy has been a success. The average weekly expenditure on food, education and health has shown a
32%, 68% and 31% rise after the liquor ban, the report card said, further asserting that fewer women are
subjected to emotional and physical violence. Of the women surveyed before the liquor ban, 79% had
reported emotional violence and this is now down to 11%, said the study. In the case of physical and
sexual violence, the numbers are down from 54% and 15% respectively to 5% and 4%.

However, the liquor ban has affected families in different ways, said Rupesh Kumar of Patna-based
Koshish Charitable Trust. “When you implement a policy for a state as huge as Bihar, you cannot have a
clear-cut outcome,” he said. “It will be complex. Some men have quit because it is now more expensive
than what it was. Some have moved towards the cheap liquor that is made in villages because it is
difficult to curb the urge.”
Hooch is available at Rs 50 a glass, pointed out Sukanya Devi (name changed), 55, one of the participants
in the Sasaram agitation. “My life has become worse since then,” she said. “My husband works as a
night watchman. He finishes his duty, downs a couple of glasses and comes home stinking. Once he is
drunk, nobody can control him.”

A house in a Muzaffarpur village with two bottles of hooch. The village that hardly made hooch is now
producing Rs 2 lakh worth every day post liquor ban.

Hooch made at Rs 50 a litre, sold at Rs 200

The state has launched a “concerted drive” to enforce the liquor ban, said Nayyar Hasnain Khan,
Inspector General (IG), Bihar Police. “It is a long-term drive and there will be ups and downs,” he said.
“But the larger perception is in favour of the liquor ban. Cases of domestic violence have gone down, the
roads are safer for women, and even the festivals are more peaceful.”

Khan listed some recent measures to curb the use of alcohol in Bihar. “We have created more check-
posts, installed more CCTV cameras, procured canines and so on,” he said. “We even created a new
position of ‘IG prohibition’. Bihar is a landlocked state. Our priority is on two fronts: One is to ensure the
liquor is not smuggled in. And the other is to monitor villages where the liquor is manufactured.”

But our investigation showed that illicit brewing is rampant in the state’s interior regions.

Deep in a village in Muzaffarpur--220 km from Sasaram--Saurav Sahni, 50, (name changed) explained
how hooch is made--but not before asking a basic question: “Are you from the CID [Crime Investigation
Department]?”

Once he is reassured, he is candid.

“We take a 200-litre drum and bury it, leaving the top open,” Sahni said, “We mix carbide, urea, yeast,
jaggery and a bit of mahua [a flower fermented to make alcohol] and let it sit for a week or so. Then we
take the drum out, and keep a vessel of cold water on top of it. A plate separates the drum and the
vessel.”
The next task is to make a hole near the top of the drum and heat it, Sahni added. “The solution that
dnm,rips from the hole is hooch.”

The village is among the many situated along the river Gandak. “We take a boat across the river and
prepare the hooch in the forests beyond it,” said Sahni. “We are currently not making it because of the
elections. But we can do a video call sometime next month so you can see it live.”

The forests beyond the river where the locals make hooch.

There are at least 50 such people in the village making 20 litres of hooch everyday, said Sahni. “This is a
conservative estimate,” he said. “We spend Rs 50 to make a litre of hooch. We sell it for Rs 200.”

At this rate, a single village in Bihar can make hooch worth Rs 2 lakh everyday. “You will find people
making hooch in most of the villages in Bihar. There is demand so there will be supply,” he said. “We
didn

’t even make 20% of this before the liquor ban.”

Hooch is far more potent than the usual whiskey, sold at a higher price in the black market now. The
demand for hooch, therefore, has been on the rise, said Sushila Devi (name changed), 30, who lives in
the vicinity of the alcohol shop in Sasaram that the women shut down in 2013. “Hooch is available in
every village,” she said. “One glass is enough for you to be on cloud nine. My husband drinks that, and
my six-year-old son watches him.”

The 200-litre drum in a village of Muzaffarpur. The locals make hooch in such drums.

Sushila Devi went on to narrate an incident from a few months ago that she has not been able to forget.
“One evening, my husband came to the colony drunk,” she recollected. “He was so sloshed that he
collapsed before reaching the house. When my son and I walked out to fetch him, the bottle of hooch
was lying beside him. My curious son ran towards him, and took a sip from the bottle. I did not know
what to do. I still think about it. Did Nitish Kumar think of these fallouts when he enforced the liquor
ban?”

Illicit liquor deaths

Twelve men and three women in Bihar have died drinking the village-manufactured hooch since the ban
in 2016, according to the NCRB data for the years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. This year, Ajay Sahni, 48,
lost his cousin to the brew in January. He was 53. “He is survived by two kids and a wife,” said Sahni, a
resident of Maniyari village in Muzaffarpur. “He used to work as a farm labourer in Punjab. Now his wife
is doing labour work and running the household. This hooch can wreck people’s lives.”

Sahni’s brother was among the four that died in Maniyari this year drinking hooch, he said. “He was an
alcoholic,” said Sahni, who is currently campaigning for a MNREGA activist contesting elections
independently in Muzaffarpur. “But when you suddenly take something [substance] away, an addict can
spiral out of control. They need something to satisfy their urge. My brother took hooch. Many have
started doing cheap drugs.”

Drug abuse on the rise

At Disha, a de-addiction centre in Patna, Rakhi Sharma, the CEO, said she saw a sudden surge in drug
addiction in the first three years following the liquor ban.

A year before the liquor ban, in 2015-16, 9,745 addicts were registered at Disha’s two main centres
where addicts from across Bihar seek rehabilitation. Most belonged to families that earned less than Rs
20,000 per month, and fall into the 18-35 age group, said Sharma. Of those registered, 3,126, or 32%,
had come in for alcohol, while 1,509, or 15.5%, came in for weed, charas and bhang, all cannabis
extracts.

The year after the liquor ban, in 2016-17, the two centres saw 6,634 registrations. The number of
alcohol addicts that year came down to 2,673, still 40% of all registered at the centre. However, the
number of those addicted to weed, charas and bhang and enrolled at the centre rose to 1,921, or 29%,
double the percentage the previous year.

Between 2017-18 and 2018-19, the two centres had 9,628 registrations--3,444 of them for alcohol
abuse, just under 36%. But 4,427 of those registered were addicted to weed, charas and bhang, or 46%--
more than three times the 14.5% recorded in the year before the liquor ban.

An inmate at the centre, who hails from a town on the outskirts of Patna, said he used to drink Imperial
Blue, a brand of whiskey, before the liquor ban. “I would buy a full bottle for Rs 400 or so,” said the man
in his 20s. “After the liquor ban, it started going for double the amount. So I moved to weed. I can get a
packet for Rs 200 and it lasts a day as opposed to a bottle worth Rs 800 that would finish in two days. I
am a farmer’s son. I used to borrow money (to drink) even at the normal rate. After the liquor ban, some
friends introduced me to weed. It was a good replacement.”

Once an alcohol addict shifts to another substance, the body gets used to the replacement, said Sharma.
That is what happened with the man we met. “Initially, it was also scary because the administration was
strict about alcohol,” he said. “Smoking weed was safer. Later, when alcohol became easily available, I
did not feel like going back to it. I kept craving for weed.”

He has been off weed for the past two and a half months and swears not to touch it again. “I have a wife
and a kid,” he said. “I want to get back on my feet for them. I was lucky enough to get admitted here.
But most people do not have the support system to be admitted at a de-addiction centre. The state
government should have thought about that before enforcing the liquor ban.”