The Supreme Court’s order banning liquor shops
along state and national highways across the country
is a classic case of judiciary stepping in to take
a policy decision, which is actually a government’s
prerogative. On the other hand, it was precisely the
government’s failure to check the menace of drunken driving
on highways, which made the apex court intervene. This order
may seem abrupt to some, but the truth is the SC was listening
to this matter for some time now. Time and again, it had asked
the central government and state governments to control the
problem. And, when the top court did not see any improvement,
it issued the order.
Frankly, this is not just the failure of government, but also of
society at large. The problem here is simple enough to understand
-- that a number of people lose their lives in accidents on
highways due to drunken driving. It is the police’s job to check
for drunken driving, but it seems our cops have totally failed
to do so. In short, the administration
failed. But, the administration
alone can’t be blamed because it
is the fault of people as well, who
indulge in drinking while driving.
The truth is, a large section of society
is unwilling to follow the law
in India more often than one would
like to admit. Unless policing improves, a certain percentage
of people are going to drink while driving. Then, there are liquor
lobbies, which manipulate governments into doing what
they want. The end result is proliferation of liquor shops along
highways in India.
In an ideal world, the central government could have come out
with a policy like “ only one liquor shop along highways every
five or ten kilometres, but it failed. Simple policies are easy
to understand and implement. But, simple policies don’t let
vested interests do what they want to do. In any case, policies
governing alcohol business are anything but simple in India,
where large sections of society still consider it a vice ultimately
helping political class create a propaganda around it. In this
context, it seems that the SC had to give an order like this considering
there was no way it could expect either the government
or the society to improve significantly.
For smaller States, the fallout of this order is going to be even
more severe because much of the population and economic
activity is concentrated around national and state highways.
For example, in Goa, NH 66 alone cuts through Mapusa, Panaji,
Margao and goes till Canacona. So many liquor shops are
around this highway and a huge number of people will lose
their livelihood precisely because the SC took a policy decision
due to inaction on the government’s part.
