Repeal for Profit

To most Indians, prohibition is as much a part of life as cow worship. Both of India's major religions -- Hinduism and Islam-- endorse prohibition, and Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of India's independence movement, made prohibition a top-priority goal. "If I could be dictator of India for one hour," he said, "the first thing I would do is to impose a nationwide prohibition." After India won independence in 1947, Gandhi's Congress Party gradually did just that. Although many loopholes remain and some 50 million of India's 500 million population manage to get liquor, the sale of alcohol is banned in most parts of India.

Last week the southwestern Indian state of Kerala, the most densely populated of the country's 17 states, raised a storm by repealing prohibition within its borders. The repeal was the work of Kerala's new Communist-led state government, but it had nothing to do with ideology; Kerala's almost empty treasury badly needs the more than $15 million a year that liquor taxes would bring. In fact, many politicians in other states are beginning to re-examine India's official teetotalism, aware that they could use the $1 billion or so that could be collected in liquor taxes for education and welfare. In the Congress Party-ruled state of Maharashtra, the cabinet is considering a way to subsidize the cost of milk for Bombay's needy by legalizing liquor in the cities but still forbidding it in the rural areas.

$23 Scotch. One reason that the states are willing to reconsider the ban is that it is so full of loopholes and so often violated. Foreign tourists, for example, can usually get all the liquor they want in the more expensive hotel bars in major cities. By the odd procedure of swearing out an affidavit that they are alcoholics, some Indians may get a monthly ration--at $23 for a bottle of genuine Scotch, $7 for a local product. Many nonalcoholics do not hesitate to swear.

The great majority of Indians who drink patronize speakeasies that sell illegally brewed liquor at prices ranging from 3-c- to 15-c- a shot. The demand is so great that bootlegging in India is conducted on a scale that would have astounded even Al Capone. One survey counted 487 illicit stills within a one mile radius in Bombay. To try to avoid detection by anti-booze police squads, bootleggers often place their stills near public latrines or tanning factories so that those odors mask the pungent smell of fermentation. A favorite way to transport the illicit brew from still to speakeasy is in bicycle inner tubes that are wound around the courier's body and legs. A government report charged that Indian bootleggers make it a rule to toss in broken-up flashlight batteries for tang, and to add cockroaches, lizards, cashew husks and orange peels for body. Not surprisingly, illicit liquor causes thousands of deaths each year.

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