Skip to main content

Prohibition in Gujarat? Ahmedabad consumes 1.5 to 2 lakh litres of moonshine per day, Surat 50,000 litres

By RK Misra*
If pride and prejudices are pesky, both hype and hypocrisy hurt.
Gujarat and it’s ‘model’ have been the toast of the Indian season ever since it’s Chief Minister , Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014.This includes it’s liquor prohibition policy which has adherents like Bihar now where Nitish Kumar came to power after knocking the wind out of Modi’s sails!
Billowing in the political clouds ever since, are propounded perceptions of a ‘dry’ India. Kumar could do with a closer look at adversary Modi’s ‘model’ state before giving wings to his national vision.
Proud and boastful of the fact that it has been the only state in the country which was born ‘dry’ and continues to remain so till date, Gujarat’s much hyped liquor ‘totalitarianism’ took a humpty-dumpty like fall last week when over 20 people died after consuming hooch near Surat. What has now become a standard drill after decades of practice is in place.
Newly anointed Chief Minister Vijay Rupani is making all the right noises. Top cops-regional and district heads-transferred, smaller fry suspended. The anti-terrorist squad (ATS) chief takes charge of investigations. A three man top cop panel headed by additional director general of police (ADGP), also looks into the matter and submits it’s report to the state home department head. Within 24 hours over a thousand country liquor cases are registered.
Carton loads are being seized at entry checkpoints into the state. A full blooded search for the culprit methanol is under way. Blah, blah, blah and the farce goes on.
Consumption or possession of liquor without a valid permit is a nonbailable offence in the state. A person arrested on either count has to be produced in court to be bailed out. And yet it oozes Bacchus brew from every nook and cranny of its ample frame.
Booze, as the upwardly mobile call it, is lucrative business and according to conservative estimates, a Rs 30,000 crore annual turnover, pure black money spewing industry. While Prime Minister Modi may have pulled out all the stops to unearth Indian black money stashed abroad, his decade and a quarter year stint as chief minister of the state, failed to dent the business. In fact, to be fair to him, no chief minister who held office in the state was ever able to stem the flow.
The business has three components. At the bottom of the pyramid is the poor man’s drink-hooch, lattha or moonshine. Then follows the desi or country liquor, which is the preferred drink of rural Gujarat followed by brewery liquor at the apex (rum, whisky, gin, vodka etc.).
Hooch is the preferred drink of the urban labour class while ‘desi’ distilled largely for captive consumption in villages ranks safer and a notch higher. The fruit liquor ‘mahua’ ranks in this category.
With a consumer base of the middle and affluent class in cities and towns, Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) as brewery made liquor is called in official parlance, holds sway. Country liquor is a cottage industry but brewery liquor flows into the state from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra even Punjab and Haryana.
Let’s take the case of Gujarat’s biggest city Ahmedabad. A network of about 1000 bootleggers sells anywhere between 1.5 to 2 lakh litres of moonshine per day. Women outnumber men in this business. This is besides the IMFL business where the brand of your choice is home delivered to you.
The trade is techno-savvy and ‘whats app’ and other such applications come in handy. Surat is reported to guzzle 50,000 litres per day and almost 70 per cent of the 18,000 villages in the state brew their own country liquor. All major cities report high consumption and rural areas are no exception.
There are 61,000 health permit holders in the state and the average daily consumption of alcohol to permit holders is put at around Rs 75 lakhs worth.
No bootlegger can operate in Gujarat without police connivance and every ‘point’ of operation has to be properly negotiated for the amount to be paid to the cop which goes right up to the top and from there to the political top brass. The cops may be sloppy in policing but would be the envy of management experts in planning and distribution of ill-gotten spoils.
Thus it is the huge amount of unadulterated black money greasing the administrative-political system in Gujarat that ensures a high decibel sound and light show only for the benefit of the masses with little or no follow-up action.
Take the case of the 2009 hooch tragedy in Ahmedabad where 150 people lost their lives. Modi, then the chief minister, made all the appropriate noises. A Commission of Inquiry was instituted with former High Court judge KM Mehta as the chairman. The panel submitted its report in 2011 and pin drop silence thereafter.
The Gujarat Vidhan Sabha was quick to amend the pertinent Act provisioning for even death penalty for those convicted in spurious liquor cases. The Bill was cleared by the then Governor Dr Kamala Beniwal. Not a single person has got life imprisonment thereafter, let alone terminal punishment.
The whole business of prohibition in Gujarat is a big charade in which everyone is happy and no one emerges the poorer except the people. Gujarat is soggy wet so those who want to drink, get enough of it but for a price. The cop is happy, he gets his cut and the politician in power more so because he gets a fair share as well besides the rip off from transfers and postings for playing favourites.
Right from the sub-inspector to the DGP, the transfers are all at the behest of the Home department and the politicians who preside over it. The bootlegger is happy because he still manages to make money for himself despite all the pricks and cuts.
It is only the honest tax payer who gets fobbed because the state loses a huge amount of money in excise and allied duties. Never mind this common man, he was in any case, born to bear the burden of the cross. Moonshine for the earthy, sunshine for the dirty!
---
*Senior journalist based in Gandhinagar. Blog: http://wordsmithsandnewsplumbers.blogspot.in/

Comments

Post a Comment

TRENDING

Gram sabha as reformer: Mandla’s quiet challenge to the liquor economy

By Raj Kumar Sinha*  This year, the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj is organising a two-day PESA Mahotsav in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, on 23–24 December 2025. The event marks the passage of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA), enacted by Parliament on 24 December 1996 to establish self-governance in Fifth Schedule areas. Scheduled Areas are those notified by the President of India under Article 244(1) read with the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, which provides for a distinct framework of governance recognising the autonomy of tribal regions. At present, Fifth Schedule areas exist in ten states: Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana. The PESA Act, 1996 empowers Gram Sabhas—the village assemblies—as the foundation of self-rule in these areas. Among the many powers devolved to them is the authority to take decisions on local matters, including the regulation...
Post a Comment
»

MG-NREGA: A global model still waiting to be fully implemented

By Bharat Dogra  When the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MG-NREGA) was introduced in India nearly two decades ago, it drew worldwide attention. The reason was evident. At a time when states across much of the world were retreating from responsibility for livelihoods and welfare, the world’s second most populous country—with nearly two-thirds of its people living in rural or semi-rural areas—committed itself to guaranteeing 100 days of employment a year to its rural population.
Post a Comment
»

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor*  This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.
Post a Comment
»

Concerns raised over move to rename MGNREGA, critics call it politically motivated

By A Representative   Concerns have been raised over the Union government’s reported move to rename the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), with critics describing it as a politically motivated step rather than an administrative reform. They argue that the proposed change undermines the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and seeks to appropriate credit for a programme whose relevance has been repeatedly demonstrated, particularly during times of crisis.
Post a Comment
»

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.
59 comments
»

Rollback of right to work? VB–GRAM G Bill 'dilutes' statutory employment guarantee

By A Representative   The Right to Food Campaign has strongly condemned the passage of the Viksit Bharat – Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB–GRAM G) Bill, 2025, describing it as a major rollback of workers’ rights and a fundamental dilution of the statutory Right to Work guaranteed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In a statement, the Campaign termed the repeal of MGNREGA a “dark day for workers’ rights” and accused the government of converting a legally enforceable, demand-based employment guarantee into a centralised, discretionary welfare scheme.
Post a Comment
»

Making rigid distinctions between Indian and foreign 'historically untenable'

By A Representative   Oral historian, filmmaker and cultural conservationist Sohail Hashmi has said that everyday practices related to attire, food and architecture in India reflect long histories of interaction and adaptation rather than rigid or exclusionary ideas of identity. He was speaking at a webinar organised by the Indian History Forum (IHF).
Post a Comment
»

India’s Halal economy 'faces an uncertain future' under the new food Bill

By Syed Ali Mujtaba*  The proposed Food Safety and Standards (Amendment) Bill, 2025 marks a decisive shift in India’s food regulation landscape by seeking to place Halal certification exclusively under government control while criminalising all private Halal certification bodies. Although the Bill claims to promote “transparency” and “standardisation,” its structure and implications raise serious concerns about religious freedom, economic marginalisation, and the systematic dismantling of a long-established, Muslim-led Halal ecosystem in India.
Post a Comment
»

From jobless to ‘job-loss’ growth: Experts critique gig economy and fintech risks

By A Representative   Leading economists and social activists gathered in the capital on Friday to launch the third edition of the State of Finance in India Report 2024-25 , issuing a stark warning that the rapid digitalization of the Indian economy is eroding welfare systems and entrenching "digital dystopia." 
Post a Comment
»