Near a busy, congested junction in South Chennai's Velachery is a shuttered shop without a signboard. But two empty liquor bottles balanced on the edge of a wall are a giveaway, as are the scores of metal bottle caps strewn across the shop front.
This shop is one of the 500 liquor outlets in Tamil Nadu that the government shut down on on Sunday as part of the first phase of the plan to impose complete prohibition across the state, in keeping with a pre-election promise made by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa. The largest number of shops to be shuttered – 43 – were in Sivaganga district. Madurai followed with 37 and Ramnad at 36. It still isn't clear when the entire state will be dry.
The plan isn't without its critics. Many have raised concerns about the substantial loss of revenue from liquor taxes that will hurt the state's already-precarious finances. Tamil Nadu has a monopoly over the wholesale and retail sale of alcohol in the state through the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation, or TASMAC, which continues to run approximately 6,300 retail outlets statewide. As reported in The Hindu, TASMAC's revenues will fall by Rs 5 crore a day from the current Rs 70 crore or so a day.
Small steps
The Velachery shop, situated right next to the local bus terminus, was always swarming with customers in the evening, said local shopkeepers. People working in the area seemed to support prohibition – especially in Madurai, where they had heard of raging alcohol-induced brawls. “Alcoholism is a big problem in those places,” said SV Murugan, who works as a mechanic. “It is good that liquor shops are being shut down in stages. People will die if they are closed suddenly.”
But in Chennai region, the shutting of 58 stores has not particularly affected locals. They're simply getting their stocks from the stores that are still open. Meanwhile, customers at stores in high-end malls seem oblivious to the prohibition drive across the state. Said Ravi Nathan, a customer at a mall outlet in South Chennai, "Liquor is a small kind of entertainment we need by the end of the week.”
What about jobs?
More concerned about the move were employees of TASMAC, who fear for their jobs. A Mahesh, who works at a TASMAC outlet in Koyambedu in Chennai, said that he was not sure when it would be his shop’s turn to close, and whether the company would give him another job.
But another TASMAC employee, who works at a shopping mall outlet, said that he trusts Jayalalithaa to grant him a good job if and when his shop shuts down. The government "have told us that they will look after us”, said this person. “We know that they will do as they say.”
But will complete prohibition make any difference to the problem of alcoholism?
According to Saravanan Bhaskaran, a business development manager at a biotechnology company, a blanket ban on alcohol is not the solution. “Shutting down shops in the vicinity will decrease the number of alcoholics,” said Bhaskaran whose father struggled with alcoholism for years. “But we need an alternative. We need some counselling to help people let go of their addiction.”
He added: “In Tamil Nadu, there is no other kind of recreational activity other than drinking and cinema. Even in cinema, you show that the hero drinks often. The state needs to introduce some other recreational outlet for people.”