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.
