One of the nicest discoveries I made shortly after coming to Bangalore early in this decade was that the city’s very own UB Group took back empty beer bottles and refunded you Rs 3. What’s more, this was for small bottles which were just right when you wanted to have a glass of beer but didn’t want to have to go through an entire large bottle as beer in opened bottles doesn’t keep.
It was part of my honeymoon with the high-tech city which also seemed to be taking pains to become a green city. I had fun going round liquor shops saying I will pick up a crate of those small bottles if they would take back my empties and refund Rs 3 multiplied by 24. Most shops declined (they wanted to pocket the Rs 3) but some did not and they got my custom. But over time the practice declined, no shop would oblige and the last blow was a sharp hike in tax on beer a couple of years ago which made it terribly costly.
Which government in this day and age would encourage hard drinking by raising the relative cost of beer to spirits, I wondered. In comparison, prohibitionist Morarji Desai came off with flying colours. His Janata sarkar, in order to discourage alcohol consumption, had brought out a special light beer, Rosy Pelican. Not only was it light, it had a bit of flavour. But Indians don’t like light beers and over time the brand withered away.
Bangalore has for long, sad to say, been a hard drinker’s paradise. You can take a drink standing at the counter of a liquor shop, which does have a licence to serve, anywhere in the city, something unheard of in most other Indian cities. Liquor shops remain open inordinately long, there is no supervision of opening and closing hours and if you have not guessed, alcoholism is a serious problem among the poor, as I have found out from NGOs working with them.
When it comes to alcohol, official policy inevitably gets it wrong. Periodic attempts to make light drinks like beer and wine available easily off grocery shelves have come to nothing, instead drinking joints have proliferated. Particularly fascinating has been the present dispensation’s attempt to strike a much publicised blow against alcoholism by deciding to ban arrack. Deny the poor man his drink and ergo he will stop drinking, went the logic.
Instead, what happened was that Indian liquor companies which sold their branded products and didn’t care to cater to the bottom of the pyramid have discovered that market segment. Today spirits bearing a label on the bottle and a name (of course, you will not have heard of it) have flooded the cheap end of the market, costing around what arrack used to. Alcoholism among the poor thrives and so does government revenues.
Still, all is not lost. Look at the brighter side, I told myself. Look at the way department stores which have their own liquor corners, are filling up with wines from all over the world. To old well known Indian names like Indage and Grover have recently been added new ones like Sula, and quality has been going up and up. If only the government would lower taxes a little, I began to dream, good wines would flood the lives of middle class Indians, making for less hard drinking and better living.
Then the blow struck. A few months ago the more affordable quality Indian wines disappeared from the shelves. What has happened, I asked. New taxes are coming, warned the shop owners. Then the blow became official. All wines imported into the state now bear a tax of Rs 300 per bottle. A Sula or Indage bottle, earlier costing around Rs 500, would now sell for Rs 800!
And hard liquor costs the same! The result is that all the economic incentives are in favour of my having a peg of my favourite Old Monk rum rather than a glass or two of wine.
It seems that revenue is not the consideration for the state government.
Its intake from the sale of wine is minimal. The tax is part of a policy to encourage growing grapes and making wine in Karnataka so as to give a boost to its horticulture. There can be a hundred and one good reasons for this as Karnataka has the weather and terrain for growing grapes but if at the end of the day most better known wine prices jump and hard liquor prices remain the same then things could hardly get more perverse.
Bangalore is still a city for good living, despite its traffic jams. New eateries keep opening at an amazing pace, undaunted by the economic slowdown. A growing wine drinking culture which was so visible had given an additional flavour to the good living. But that is not to be.
