The lovely tale of Liquor
during Lockdown and before
At every stage, addiction is driven by one of the most powerful, mysterious, and
vital forces of human existence. What drives addiction is longing —
a longing not just of brain, belly, or loins but finally of the heart.
Cornelius Platinga
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The use of alcohol in India for drinking purposes dates back to somewhere between 3000 and 2000 BC. An alcoholic beverage called Sura which was distilled from the rice was popular at that time in India for common men to unwind at the end of a stressful day. . Yet the first mention of Alcohol appears in Rig Veda (1700BC). It mentions intoxicants like soma and prahamana. Although the soma plant might not exist today, it was famous for delivering a euphoric high. It was also recorded in the Samhita, the medical compendium of Sushruta that he who drinks soma will not age and will be impervious to fire, poison, or weapon attack. The sweet juice of Soma was also said to help establish a connection with the gods. Such was the popularity of alcohol. Initially used for medicinal purposes, with time it evolved and became the beverage that brought life to social gatherings, and eventually consuming alcohol has become a habit for many.
With such a rich history of not just humans but also of the gods,
what is a worldwide pandemic to stop anybody from drinking?
. . .
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According to a report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2018, an average Indian drinks approximately 5.7 liters of alcohol every year. In a population of casual and excessive drinkers, with the shutters of liquor stores down, it must have been extremely difficult for “certain” people to survive lockdown. In the first two phases of lockdown, the desperation had quadrupled prices of alcohol in the Grey Market of India. Also, According to Google Trends, online searches for “how to make alcohol at home” peaked in India during the fourth week of March, which was the same when the lockdown was announced. As a consequence, a few people died drinking home-brewed liquor. People committed suicide due to alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Owing to the worsening situation and to reboot the economy, some states decided to open licensed liquor stores in the third phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown in India. This decision was the worst best decision the state governments could take. The kilometer-long queues in front of liquor stores were evidence that a pandemic can turn your life upside down yet your relationship with alcohol cannot move an inch.
The love in the hearts of those who are addicted was explicit. We might have seen addiction, we might have witnessed desperation but what happened in the month of May was madness, not just in terms of the way people pounced but also in the way the government earned. According to a report by Hindustan Times, on the first day of the third phase of Lockdown, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh recorded a sale of over Rs 100 Crore from liquor. On the second day of the reopening of Liquor stores, Karnataka reported sales of 197 crores in a single day which was the largest ever. Eventually, the prices of Liquor were hiked to 100% to discourage people from drinking.
. . .
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There was a special corona fee that was imposed in Delhi by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. A 70% corona fee was imposed in Delhi, yet the sales did not drop. The entire situation was a disaster for the law enforcement officers, social distancing was easily abandoned and a basic code of conduct was happily violated. Despite the chaos created, the states continued to collect revenues. Home delivery of alcohol was allowed in Maharashtra and e-tokens were sold in Delhi.
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Demand for liquor is inelastic which means that
the sale of alcohol is not much responsive to change in prices.
In general, since alcohol policy is a state subject in India, revenue from Liquor is a cash cow for state governments. In 2018 and 2019, four states collectively collected about 20,000 crores in taxes from the sale of liquor. As much as the state earns from the sale of Liquor it is undoubtedly, a threat to the Economy. Consumption of alcohol has dire health consequences. When a person consumes an alcoholic beverage, there is a rise in BAC because of which there is a gradual and progressive loss of driving ability because of an increase in reaction time, overconfidence, degraded muscle coordination, impaired concentration, and decreased auditory and visual acuity. This is known as drunken driving. (V. M. Anantha Eashwar, 2020) Drunken driving is the third biggest cause of road accidents and over speeding in India. Road accidents are not it; alcoholism causes sleep problems, heart, and liver issues. Also, it is not about an individual’s life, it ruins the lives of all people concerned.
Addiction also causes economic loss. In 2000, Vivek Benegal and his team assessed 113 patients admitted to a special de-addiction service for alcohol dependence. They found that
the average individual earned a mean of ₹1,661 but
spent ₹1,938 per month on alcohol, incurring high debt.
They also found that 95% did not work for about 14 days in a month. They concluded that it led to a loss of ₹13,823 per person per year in terms of foregone productivity. A more recent study, Health Impact and Economic Burden of Alcohol Consumption in India, led by Gaurav Jyani, concluded that alcohol-attributable deaths would lead to a loss of 258 million life-years between 2011 and 2050. The study placed the economic burden on the health system at $48.11 billion, and the societal burden (including health costs, productivity loss, and so on) at $1,867 billion. “This amounts to an average loss of 1.45% of the gross domestic product (GDP) per year to the Indian economy,” the study said. (Mint, 2020)
Setho ka Gaon
With each passing day, the ‘curtain of separation’ weighs down on the women of Afghanistan, paving the way for tyranny to thrive.
Arth
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The Economics of the Hukou System in China
Perfect mobility is quintessential to achieve efficiency in a free market economy. Be it improving the financial conditions of migrants, providing them greater job opportunities or enhancing their productivity, perfect mobility offers a plethora of advantages to the migrants & leads to a weakening of the rural-urban divide.
In China, a system of household registration known as the ‘Hukou System’ was established with the motive of controlling internal migration & maintaining social stability, thus limiting perfect mobility of workers. After being transformed quite a lot of times, this system has come under scrutiny.
The Hukou system is a home registration system in China which came into force in 1958. According to this system, each Chinese citizen is categorised as a Rural Hukou Holder or an Urban Hukou Holder on the basis of his/her household registration record which includes his/her name, parents’ name, spouse’s name and date of birth, thus providing a sort of an identity card to make the citizen a permanent resident of a region. A hukou would be allotted to a person if he meets certain criteria like minimum years of experience, education level, technical expertise, owns a house etc. An option of buying a hukou directly by paying a fee is also available albeit to certain terms. The premise of the Hukou system is that a person’s primary residence will serve as the basis for access to public services like healthcare, education for their children, pension etc. This means that a migrant working in a Chinese city won’t be able to avail the most basic services in that area as his primary residence is different. This also results in migrants leaving their children in the countryside, while they work in the cities as their children won’t be able to attend educational institutions in the city. If the migrants don’t possess an Urban Hukou Card, they are forced to live in rented apartments or travel long distances from their primary residence to their place of work. Supporters of this hukou system, most of them being from the urban class in megacities assert its necessity as it would enable in removing the possibility of emergence of slums which would degrade the inherent charm of these urban cities. The State’s viewpoint was that rural areas had greater capacity to absorb excess labour, so the majority of population should be concentrated in these regions. Hence, the Hukou system would facilitate legal migration & provide numerous benefits to the migrants ranging from health insurance, retirement allowance to a housing fund(only if they purchase a house).
Contrary to the government’s objectives, however, the Hukou system is being reformed due to its inherent bottlenecks.
“Chart showing the disparity between the urban & the countryside per capita income and greater urban rural divide in China post 1990”
It became clear that while urban residents were allotted benefits, the rural folk were left to fend for themselves. Additionally, in the middle of the 20th century, farmers paid three times higher taxes than the urban dwellers but continued to experience a lower standard of life, education, healthcare, thus, accentuating the divide. Various other hurdles emerged within the hukou system. An imbalance in public spending between the cities & countryside emerged, resulting in unequal access to goods & services, defeating the very basis of socialism which is to achieve equality. Instead of achieving effective competition in the labour market, with people competing for the jobs, the system gave rise to a situation wherein citizens of certain cities(the cosmopolitan cities) became better equipped for the labour market. On one hand, urban areas were being beautified with tall buildings constructed by the migrant labour & on the other hand, the migrants without a hukou were subject to dangerous living conditions in those very cities.
“Graph comparing the urban population, urban hukou population & migrant population in China till 2020.”
On a positive note, however, the goal of urbanisation was achieved to a certain extent but it came at a huge cost. The success of this system, as quoted by its advocates, has become a subject of debate among the rich & poor factions of the Chinese economy. Even after the proposed urbanisation, about 200 million migrants lived in the urban areas without a hukou which meant that they were living illegally, thus pointing towards the ineffective implementation of this complex system.
Boosting the Chinese economy & providing equality to rural & urban people were the issues that came to the limelight; hence, the State took the initiative to reform this rigid hukou system. In 2014, it launched its ‘New Urbanisation Plan’ which promised to assist over 100 million residents in the process of swapping their rural hukou for an urban one in order to create a new, greater level of equality. Instead of targeting only the big cities, the government has made policies for the smaller cities as well. On this note, cities with more than 1 million population were advised to offer a hukou to any applicant & the same has been expanded to cities with fewer than 3 million citizens as well. Also, local governments have been given the authority in their territories in matters pertaining to forming the criteria for hukou eligibility. As a domino effect of the same, an interesting ‘Talent War’ has emerged in which the affluent cities have raised the status to allot a hukou to the migrants whereas the inland cities have lowered them so as to retain the talented workforce. Now, for becoming a legal resident in big cities like Shanghai or Beijing, the migrants are offered 4 paths to hukou- becoming an investor in local business, purchasing a home, holding a university degree or having a qualifying job. Indirectly, the option to purchase a home to become eligible for hukou has been done to boost the real estate sector & entice home buyers. There’s no element of surprise that this has become one of the reasons for the insane housing prices thus contributing to China’s rising debt problems.
The resulting deadweight losses in terms of social welfare would lead one to call for the abolition of the entire hukou system but economic and political researchers have suggested that complete abolition of this system would become a herculean task, so its orderly reform is the need of the hour. Hence, given the social and economic problems of this system, strong alternatives to increase residential consumption are needed. The hukou system is a great example of how an economic plan devoted solely to urbanisation & controlling internal migration has resulted in dismantling the economic equality between the rural and urban dwellers. Perfect mobility is, thus, very essential in today’s globalised world and any restriction on the same would lead to the kind of situations being experienced by the migrants in China. As far as the issues like development of slums & squatters due to overcrowding, excess unemployment due to excess supply of labour or congestion in cities are concerned, the State should take measures to provide low cost affordable housing, efficient rail system, and so on and so forth.
Harshita Goel
Hansraj College
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