The nation’s spirits

The government’s cruise against booze

The Punjab has the highest crime rate among all four provinces. Does it mean Punjabis are more criminal minded than the others? Does it mean crime gets reported more in Punjab than in other provinces? Or is it a manifestation of the painstaking diligence of the Punjab law enforcement agencies? (You can find the whole of Punjab police along with the elite force on check points everywhere – right next to hotel gates and in the adjoining streets, and at night outside housing societies – to catch people carrying booze inside or outside their bodies.) Is it a combination of the three?

On the subject of the crusade against liquor being the police’s favourite activity, I suspect it is because people with booze, unlike murderers and dacoits, don’t fire back, not until they have booze to look forward to. Drinking and driving, for example, is as serious as crimes come, but there is seldom any FIR registered for it. The policemen merely want their cut without getting into any hassle. They simply make you stop at every check post and when you are out of your car, manoeuvre into intimate positions vis-à-vis you with the ultimate aim to sniff. It’s such a relief when the police wala retreats even if you are caught drunk – any proximity with a chillar is too much for comfort. As it happens, they let you go in either case, for free if you’re clean and with some bribe if you aren’t. They don’t particularly care whether there is a nuclear reactor tied to the roof of your car.

Is it even Islamic, this whole practice? Hazrat Umar is unanimously considered the most no-nonsense and stern of all Muslim rulers. Even in his tenure nobody was stalked to see if he was carrying booze. Neither was anybody used as a sniff-dog to find out whether somebody was under the influence. If there was a complaint, the suspect was simply asked to differentiate between two pieces of cloth, one white and the other off white. If he could successfully do that he was let go even if he had consumed alcohol. The point wasn’t to punish the use of alcohol per se, but to punish drunkards.

The Punjab government appears to be more anti-liquor than other governments. It has recently increased tax on raw alcohol per gallon because of which the production of Murree Brewery has decreased considerably since it can’t raise prices – neither of its competitors, Indus Karachi and Quetta Distillery, has been affected by the tax hike. Thankfully for MB, beer appears to be Pakistanis’ favourite hard drink, and MB is the only company in Pakistan that brews beer (QDL is seeking government’s approval desperately to let them brew some too).

In Pakistan, these tax increases would tell something about the preferences of men in power. If anybody other than the Sharifs end up making the next Punjab government, one can never completely rule out imposition of value added tax to delicacies such as paaye, khad and zubaan.

What’s interesting is that liquor is among only a few products the government can’t get cheated upon (in terms of taxes) because the government regulates the sales itself, and it is only sold on permits. Also, the government can always control the amount of liquor sold by controlling the number of permits issued/renewed every July. The government gathered roughly Rs 3 billion from legitimate sale of liquor in 2010. Sindh accounts for 1.78 billion, Punjab for 926 million, and Balochistan for 118 million (figures for KP could not be found on the internet, where people either don’t drink or else prefer something else).

I don’t intend to argue that alcohol isn’t harmful; it undoubtedly is. However, news of deaths caused by consumption of cheap spurious liquor appears frequently in newspapers, mostly in rural areas where there are no hotels and no regulated liquor shops. Ever since the drop in production of MB, such incidents are now getting registered in major cities as well. If the alternative to harm is death, can’t we allow regulated liquor outlets for those who just can’t resist? Isn’t it the government’s responsibility to insure the well-being of everybody?

The history of alcohol in Pakistan is rather complex. Bhutto imposed a total prohibition in Pakistan. General Zia relaxed this law, requiring anyone wishing to consume alcohol to present credentials demonstrating that he was a non-Muslim. Either Zia was considerate of the minorities or he was sensitive to the needs of the drinkers among the majority. It is said that the army was once the #1 customer of MB! The situation must be much different now – in the polarised army of the 2010s half the officers must be non-drinkers; the ones who drink would presumably have enough money to go for the imported rather than the local stuff. Times change, and with them the priorities of great nations!

This is a difficult issue and I won’t pretend I have the perfect solution for it (I am after all no Imran Khan). However, for starters, will somebody at least tell the police walas to keep some distance?

The writer is a member of the band Beygairat Brigade.