Up’s hooch tragedy

Up’s hooch tragedy

Instead of bans and conspiracy allegations, focus on administrative efficiency.

The hooch tragedy in UP and Uttarakhand, which has already claimed 116 lives, has seen UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath hint at a conspiracy involving the Samajwadi Party. This is a common political trope in India. Whenever a tragedy occurs, ruling politicians reflexively blame the opposition for engineering heinous crimes – perhaps in a clumsy attempt to forestall charges of mismanagement. However, hooch tragedies generally stem from wrong policies and lax policing. There are now reports that the spurious alcohol that led to so many deaths in UP’s Saharanpur and Kushinagar districts, as well as in neighbouring Uttarakhand, may have come from Bihar. If this is true, it blows the conspiracy theory out of the water.

Bihar is presently a dry state with a JD(U)-BJP coalition government. Thus, the BJP government in UP should be asking some serious questions of its alliance partner in a neighbouring state. Prohibition only leads to an illicit liquor industry that throws up periodic hooch tragedies, besides costing the exchequer crores in lost revenue. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar went for prohibition because he saw the move as being popular with women voters. True, alcoholism can be a problem, leading to domestic violence and penury. But the remedy to this lies in punishing domestic violence and providing rehabilitation facilities for alcoholics.

Since these require administrative and police efficiency, those in power find it much easier to ban alcohol or tax it heavily. And this finds little resistance given the moralistic approach to alcohol in the first place. That, in turn, gives rise to criminal syndicates peddling hooch. It is this convoluted approach to policy making that hampers other areas as well, lowering the general standard of governance in India.

From reservations to fighting pollution to agrarian distress, government tends to treat the symptoms rather than do the heavy lifting needed to address the cause. The need of the hour is more jobs and better education, not quotas. We need better urban planning and public transport to control pollution, not emergency measures like odd-even traffic restrictions. And we need serious police reforms to improve law and order. The country already has too many restrictive laws that can’t be implemented. Therefore, the aim ought to be to boost administration, regulate lightly and enforce tightly. In other words junk today’s mai baap sarkar approach, which will only lead to more tragedies.