By M L Satyan

Bengaluru, May 26, 2020: The state of Tamil Nadu on May 5 issued a government order to resume the operation of Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) liquor shops from May 7.

The order was in line with a directive issued by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs on May 1 permitting the sale of liquor in states, subject to physical distancing.

All the opposition parties in Tamil Nadu along with social/women activists protested against the opening of TASMAC. The High Court then ordered the state government to close the liquor shops.

The state government appealed to the Supreme Court. For the state, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, Additional Advocate General Balaji Srinivasan and advocate Yogesh Kanna vociferously argued that the High Court order is arbitrary and unreasonable. It is a case of judiciary encroaching into state policy. “It is the decision of the state how and what to sell… Why should the High Court get into it?

The Supreme Court stayed the Madras High Court order of May 8 to close liquor shops in Tamil Nadu with immediate effect to maintain physical distancing till the Covid-19 lockdown is lifted or modified.

In some places customers used ‘fire crackers’ to celebrate the re-opening of the liquor shops. Some enthusiastic people even broke a pumpkin and performed an ‘aarti’ before collecting their liquor.

With liquor shops opened once again, there were long queues from early in the morning as people lined up to get coupons without which they cannot buy bottles. As per the guidelines issued by the TASMAC, liquor shops were provided with tokens in seven different colours. Each shop was instructed to disperse only 500 tokens per day. Customers were also instructed to wear masks. Unlike the last time, however, tipplers were not asked to produce their Aadhaar cards.

For 30-year-old Amudha (name changed), a domestic worker from Thuvariman village in Madurai, the opening of the liquor outlets brings back haunted memories of the violence that she had to endure from her alcoholic husband before the lockdown. She says that the lack of access to liquor during the lockdown had actually motivated her husband to give up alcohol.

“The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic indeed had a positive impact on our family. During this lockdown, my husband worked in farmlands for two days a week and earned a meager income of 500 for each day. It was the first time he paid the whole income he earned to our family. He had time to spend with the family. The children were happy since he was at home. But, all our aspirations of a positive change in the family life has been tarnished with the re-opening of the liquor shops,” she says.

Her husband stood in the queue for long hours in the scorching heat. He returned home with a ‘triumphant spirit.’ Parvathi and her children hid themselves in a closeby sugarcane field to escape from his vulgar scolding and violent beatings.

Like Amudha, wives of many alcoholics, who are from low-income families, are anxious and worried that the re-opening of liquor outlets will further worsen their economic condition, pushing them to the brink of starvation.

Kavya (name changed), who also works as a domestic worker, says that many households have not paid her due to the lockdown and that the family solely depends on the income from her husband to meet their needs. “With the relaxation of lockdown norms, fortunately my husband can work at construction sites and earn an income of around ₹500 each day. However, all that money is now being used to buy alcohol,” she says.

She adds that the move has also instilled the fear of contracting Covid-19 infection from their alcoholic husbands. “We are worried as physical distancing will go for a toss when they stand outside liquor shops. Also, they tend to spend extra time with their friends after consuming alcohol, exposing them to many people,” she says.

The reopening of alcohol shops has also robbed the opportunity of the addicts to give up liquor, says C. Ramasubramanian, a senior psychiatrist and founder of M.S. Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation. “The permanent solution to give up alcohol is a change of mental attitude, for which restricting easy accessibility of alcohol was an important aspect,” he says.

Concurring with this viewpoint, the chairman of Alcoholics Anonymous group in Madurai, says, “Many alcoholics had overcome withdrawal symptoms in the initial days of the lockdown and started to adopt more positive practices in their everyday routine. Now they are unable to control their desire to drink”.

On May 25 the local women at Tiruvallur near Chennai gathered in front of a liquor shop and tried to chase away the men standing in the queue. The police pacified the women. On the same day, the local public at Karaikal held a protest against Puducherry government’s decision to re-open the liquor shops.

In Didigul district of Tamil Nadu the ex-army soldiers and former police were hired for Covid-19 related work. Sadly, they are now made to ‘guard’ the liquor shops. One of them said to the local meadia person, “Sir, I served in the Indian Army safeguarding the ‘borders’ of the country. It made me proud of myself and my service. Now I am ashamed of myself since I am forced to ‘guard the liquor shop’ and that too in my army unifrom. Shame on our country!”.

Unreported domestic violence (wife and child beating) and sexual abuse are on the increase. Children are getting into a ‘depression mode’ due to repeated domestic violence. Ministry of women and child welfare and human rights commission do not seem to bother about the negative consequences of the re-opening of the liquor shops. Protests of women, social activists and opposition parties seem to go into the drain.

Neither state governments nor judiciary is in a mood to listen to people’s complaints. Their only target is ‘big sale and huge revenue’. The alcohol business blooms at the cost of human disaster. What an irony!