Kerala, a land of boozers?

As Kerala awaits anxiously to welcome the festive season of Onam, tipplers in the state are queuing up at the state owned Beverages corporation to break another record in the consumption of alcohol. Any occasion in Kerala is an occasion for booze. Be it a wedding, a funeral or any social gathering.

In a state of 3.3 crore people, Keralites gulped down a whopping Rs 7,860 crores (US$ 1.4 Billion) worth of alcohol in the fiscal year ending Mar 2012.

Welcome to boozer’s own country. 

The state government holds a monopoly over liquor sale in the state, after the state banned foreign liquor shops, through the government owned.

The government applies the highest state tax on liquor (around 120%). This earns it high revenues. It has the highest per capita consumption in the nation, overtaking traditionally hard-drinking states like Punjab and Haryana. Also, in a strange twist of taste, rum and brandy are the preferred drink in Kerala in a country where whisky outsells every other liquor. Alcohol helps in giving Kerala's economy a good high - shockingly, more than 40% of revenues for its annual budget come from liquor sales.

That's not all. There are some 600 privately run bars in the state and more than 5,000 shops selling toddy (palm wine), the local brew. There is also a thriving black market liquor trade.

The young men in kerala are drowning in alcohol and inviting slow death. They are in hospitals, ravaged with pancreatitis and liver diseases. In the peak of life, they are battling alcohol withdrawal syndromes in de-addiction centres. Meanwhile their parents drown in tears, their wives struggle to keep afloat and children are adrift.

Amost 95 per cent of vehicular accidents involve people who are driving after having consumed alcohol in some form or the other. And these do not happen only in the night. Alcohol-related accidents have no time of the day now, as the crowd throughout the day outside any beverages outlet will show. Alcohol has replaced water and tea as the favourite drink of Keralites.

In an attempt to curtail the menace, The Kerala high court suggested recently that sale of liquor should be allowed only after 5pm. Would the government listen to this and take appropriate steps? Would Kerala ever welcome king mahabali in a sober state?