Gujarat’s dry law and wet reality: Prohibition on paper, liquor on the streets

By Martin Macwan*

Perhaps never before in Gujarat’s history has the issue of alcohol become such a widely debated subject. Here are some key facts.

seizes one bottle of liquor every two minutes. In 2024, they confiscated 300,600 bottles of worth ₹5.78 crore. Across Gujarat, 82 lakh bottles were seized, valued at ₹144 crore. No one—not even God—can estimate how many bottles of liquor were not caught.

In 2024, 2,139 cases related to Indian-made foreign liquor and 7,796 cases related to were registered. A total of 1,58,000 litres of liquor worth ₹55.45 lakh was seized. ranked first in these cases, followed by , and then and .

Since 2021, has seized about 87,607 kilos of drugs worth ₹16,155 crore.

Across India, 10,93,000 cases related to prohibition and narcotics were registered in 2021. Gujarat alone accounted for 2,84,000 of them, followed by with 2,15,000. In 2020, Gujarat registered 2,42,000 such cases and Tamil Nadu 1,68,000. Gujarat again topped the list in 2021 with 2,83,000 cases.

But how many resulted in conviction?

In 2016, Gujarat registered the highest number of prohibition cases but also had the lowest number of convictions—only one. Experts ironically credit “police investigation” for this outcome.

The shameful comparison is that , with only 12.6 lakh people, secured 72 convictions in similar cases, while Gujarat, with 7 crore people, managed just one.

How much money is exchanged to avoid arrest, avoid investigation, or avoid conviction? No deity from among the 33 crore gods could estimate that.

Is prohibition useful?

Research by , published in The New York Times, shows that a year after prohibition in , murder and robbery cases dropped by 20%, riot cases fell by 13%, and traffic offences by 10%.

So why isn’t prohibition implemented across India? Because the revenue from alcohol is enormous.

According to India Today, the excise revenue from liquor in 2015–16 was:

Tamil Nadu ₹19,672 crore; Haryana ₹19,703 crore; Maharashtra ₹18,000 crore; Karnataka ₹15,332 crore; Uttar Pradesh ₹14,083 crore; Telangana ₹12,144 crore; Andhra Pradesh ₹12,739 crore; Madhya Pradesh ₹7,926 crore; Rajasthan ₹5,585 crore; Punjab approximately ₹5,000 crore.

My friend and colleague says, “Everyone in Gujarat is happy.”

There is prohibition on paper, so are satisfied. Liquor is easily available in every village, so people are happy. Police and politicians earn huge profits from the illegal trade, so they too are happy.

Is alcohol distributed during elections? Yes, but no one dares to expose politicians because they wear no belts to pull. During the 2019 general elections, the Election Commission seized liquor worth $44 million—₹392.83 crore—meant for voters. Gujarat supplied 65 lakh litres and ranked sixth in the country, according to Reuters.

Who suffers? Women and children.

Many girls studying at break down while speaking of how their mothers and women at home are beaten, humiliated, abused, and verbally assaulted due to alcohol.

The ordinary people of India are innocent. The government encourages men to drink and collects revenue, and with that revenue it distributes election-time schemes like “” to the same households. In the end, everything circles back. Men are happy, women are happy, and the government that wins elections is also happy. But who cares about the police struggling to maintain law and order?

Now consider , located off Gujarat’s capital. and licensed alcohol do not exist at much of a distance. According to the Chief Minister’s statement in the Assembly on 31 January 2025, since the new policy took effect, GIFT City has sold 3,324 litres of foreign liquor, 470 litres of wine, and 19,915 litres of beer, giving the government ₹94.19 lakh in tax revenue. The state’s campaign promoting “swadeshi” clearly excludes GIFT City—perhaps because this liquor is for the elite, while the poor must remain prohibited.

In 2017, challenged the Chief Minister with a one-line petition: “Name one village among Gujarat’s 18,000 where atrocities have ended because of your development.” He could not provide a single name.

At a time when Gujarat witnessed state-sponsored Ekta Yatra to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of , we ask the Chief Minister: name one village in Gujarat where no liquor is consumed, and name one police station where corruption does not exist. What would his answer be?

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*Founder, Navsarjan Trust, and Dalit Shakti Kendra, a technical-cum- empowerment institute

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