Has Pinrayi Vijayan’s Left government in Kerala used tourism as an excuse to re-open bars?
Many are calling the revised liquor policy a watershed moment for the one-year-old Vijayan government because this is undoubtedly a sensitive decision which many would have shied away from taking.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, goes the popular expression. But are these indeed desperate times? According to the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala at least, that dramatically altered the state’s liquor policy last week, it is.
The new policy states that all hotels with a classification of three stars and above can now go back to running a full-fledged bar and start serving hard liquor, earlier restricted by the previous Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government’s order. Hotels below three stars will still have a license to run wine and beer parlours and a majority of the 712-odd bars closed during the UDF’s rule would now be opened subject to the Supreme Court’s 500-metre liquor ban on pubs, bars and restaurants on highways.
In effect, the Communist Party of India(Marxist)-led government in Kerala has torn down the former government’s policy of phased prohibition and rubbished it by calling it ‘impractical’ for the state.
“We completely understand and respect the sentiments of the people who stand for prohibition. But it is an impractical solution in a place like Kerala. So, the government has this strong conviction that the policy needs to be changed in lines with the realities before us,’’ chief minister Pinrayi Vijayan told the media in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday.
Read | To drink or not to drink? Kerala high court says boozing not a fundamental right
What is this conviction? The present policy document clearly outlines two important reasons. The primary claim is that the tourism sector had suffered terribly in the last two years after the shutdown of bars. And secondly, that the widespread proliferation of drugs and narcotic substances in the state over the last two years could be directly attributed to the unavailability of liquor. Both the reasons seem to have finally pushed the government to go with the lesser evil.
Many are calling it a watershed moment for the Vijayan government that has just completed a year in power, because this is undoubtedly a decision which many would have shied away from taking, given how sensitive it is.
But what does not add up to the government’s argument is the revenue generated from the tourism sector in the last few years.
Tourism just an excuse?
According to the latest figures available on the Kerala Tourism website, the total revenue earned in the financial year of 2016 stands at Rs 29,658 crore, which shows a good 11.2 percent increase compared to the previous year’s figure of Rs 26,689 crore.
That this happened at a time when prohibition was taking effect only shows that the government’s claim that liquor ban is killing the tourism sector is actually baseless. A further look into the revenue starting from 2013 — when the old liquor policy was being drafted by the UDF government — still shows a steady progress, by more than Rs 1,500 crores annually with the foreign exchange earnings too showing a corresponding increase. (See table 1 & 2 )
The government has also claimed that the number of foreign tourist visits had reduced since the prohibition came into force. This is again proved false by the government’s own figures. While more than 9.7 lakh foreigners came to visit the state in 2015, the numbers swelled to 10.3 lakh in 2016 — a rise of 6.23%. In the same period, the domestic tourist intake also increased by 5.67%. (See table 3).
The increase in percentage may have dropped over the years, but tourist arrivals have always been higher than the previous year and so has the revenue. Calling the government’s bluff, the Congress says that the LDF has sold itself to bar owners with whom they allege the government has done a behind-the-curtain deal.
“We have strong reasons to believe that there is corruption behind this new policy. The government’s illicit relation with the liquor mafia is what has resulted in this new liquor regime. It has let down the people,’’ MM Hassan, president of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), said.
Activists are also not ruling out such a possibility. “Although we can’t prove it at the moment, there is a clear possibility of this happening. See, political parties in Kerala have always colluded with bar owners because they are the primary funders. The CPI(M) especially has a strong history,’’ activist NM Pearson said.
Perhaps, one claim of the government that sticks is regarding the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Conventions, Exhibitions & Events) sector. The figures show that while more than 4% has been the annual growth in 2014, it had dropped to a dismal 0.6% in 2015-16.
This means that Kerala as a destination for ‘event-based tourism’ has taken a severe beating. And with the SC asking all bars to be moved 500 meters away from the National Highway, it has made things worse.
With only five-star bars allowed to serve liquor as per the previous policy, and almost all of Kerala’s five-star hotels being too close to the highways, shutting shop became the only solution. With no alcohol in five-star hotels and resorts, big corporate clients started cancelling their events.
International tour operators who had been bringing such clients to Kerala every year say they are much relieved by the government’s change of heart.
“From this year, we had re-routed all our outbound enquiries to places like Sri Lanka because the moment people know there is no liquor they will ask us to cancel the reservation. Now finally some sense has prevailed,’’ Jijo Madhavapallil, who runs Ashin City Tours & Travels in London, said over the phone.
But the MICE sector contributes to hardly 10 percent of the revenue and surely the government cannot harp on it to justify the prohibition’s reversal.
“Here the problem is when the government finds ridiculous reasons to explain their stand. Most of us were expecting such a policy as we knew the LDF’s stand. But where the government is losing its credibility is when it uses wrong information to justify its stand. That’s when we suspect that something is amiss,’’ Johnson J Edayaranmula, director of Thiruvananthapuram-based NGO Alcohol & Drug Information Centre, said.
But tourism department officials say the effect of the prohibition, had it continued, would’ve been felt only in five to six years from now and would have been quite disastrous for the state as an international tourist destination. Many say that the even the temporary setback of demonetisation pales in front of the unavailability of liquor.
“There is no comparison between demonetisation and the liquor rollback. Demonetisation was a temporary setback. But by taking out liquor, you’re doing a huge damage to the brand — it’s a long-term effect. It’s such a big relief that this corrective step has been taken. Now let’s see how things play out from next season, then we will see the difference,’’ Dr V Venu, the principal secretary of Kerala Tourism, said.
Curbing drugs and spurious liquor menace
If the government is on a sticky wicket as far as the tourism argument is concerned then there is a larger and pressing issue that could bail them out of it. The void created by the unavailability of alcohol over the last two years has been taken over by a so-called ‘bigger evil’.
If the numbers of the State Excise and Prohibition Department, involved in anti-narcotic measures in Kerala is to be believed, the cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act has increased almost five times over the last two years.
From 847 NDPS cases in 2013-14, just before the prohibition came into effect, the 900% enhancement of wine production under his archdiocese. Clearly a case of ‘let them have wine’ if not hard alcohol.
In all of this, the only silver lining for the Kerala government is its decision to raise the minimum drinking age in the state from 21 to 23.
(Published in arrangement with GRIST Media)
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