Dear Express Reader The tragic hooch deaths in dry Bihar last week — the toll in Saran is officially 40, and mounting — have revived old questions about a policy whose derailment was foretold. Bihar is on the wrong side of history, prohibition has mostly floundered in its implementation - Bihar is the only large state other than Gujarat that continues with the policy, even as Haryana, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are among those that, at various points, flirted with the experiment only to roll it back. In imposing prohibition, a government must take into account consequences not just for public health but also state finances and individual freedoms while contending with the spread of the liquor mafia and the bootlegging industry. In Nitish Kumar's Bihar, strict prohibition was imposed in April 2016 in a fraught political context. It was not just a fulfilment of a campaign promise, but the gambit of a chief minister who was flailing for control, as he sought to revive and resuscitate a sagging and plateauing Bihar Turnaround Story that he had scripted with spectacular success in his first term in 2005-2010. It was a ruse by a leader running out of ideas. A leader who, despite his great achievements, has shown more righteousness than confidence in himself, and has always appeared to be on the lookout for props - dots can be connected, perhaps, between the dramatic banishment of alcohol by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the feverish ally-hopping by Politician Nitish. A year before prohibition came into effect, Nitish had tied up with old rival and political opponent Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Congress in a Mahagathbandhan after breaking a long-running pact with the BJP. A year after prohibition, he walked out of the grand alliance back into the arms of the BJP. (That about-turn wasn't to be his last either - earlier this year, Nitish left the BJP-led NDA for a second time to join hands again with Lalu's party and is currently heading a government he runs in partnership with the RJD in Mahagathbandhan 2.0). In a sense, therefore, the grave tragedy in Saran also points to the predicament of a leader trapped in his own policy and political flailing. Prohibition must have seemed like an attractive next step for a leader who was courting the "women's vote" as a way of shoring up a tenuous social coalition - unlike Lalu's RJD, Nitish's JD(U) lacked a steadfast "core" vote of its own. In his first term as chief minister, Nitish had seen his own credibility burnished enormously by the cycle scheme for girls - under the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojana in 2007-2008, cash was given to girl students who had passed Class 8. The scheme showed striking successes in increasing enrolment and reducing drop-out rates - earlier, large numbers of girl students would be forced to opt out of school especially if it meant travelling outside their village. The cycle-for-girls scheme became a part of a large and growing package of pro-women measures - there was the Mukhyamantri Balika Poshak Yojana (free school uniforms for girls), scholarships for girl students in government schools from class 1 to class 10, on the one hand, and 50 per cent reservation for women in panchayats and urban local bodies and reservation of 35 per cent seats for women in all state government vacancies, on the other. Nitish's successes on the law and order front were also seen to have firmed up the support of women voters - women are the main beneficiaries of safer public spaces. So when prohibition was announced in 2016, it was projected and promoted as a Gandhian response to the concerns raised by women who often bear the brunt of alcoholism, as abuse and domestic violence. And now, even though the evidence mounts of its failures - they say there is now "home delivery" of alcohol in Bihar's town and village, those arrested for violating the law belong disproportionately to lower classes and castes even as vital administrative energies are diverted to the futile effort to curb a growing parallel economy - the Nitish government finds it difficult to dial the lofty rhetoric back. It has bent only enough to tinker with the law, not to revoke it. The chief minister's irritability and abrasiveness in the face of questions raised in the aftermath of the Saran deaths, and his government's rote response of suspending and transferring junior officials and raiding and arresting minor hooch traders, are now part of a dismal pattern that repeats itself - despite the mounting toll it takes in Bihar. Till next week, Vandita | 
No comments:
Post a Comment