Bansi
Lal, former chief minister of Haryana, was a spartan and inflexible
politician. He formed the Haryana Vikas Party after parting ways from
the Congress and, in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won
the 1996 Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state. He won on the
promise of making it illegal to buy, sell, consume or produce alcohol in
the state if elected.
Bansi Lal made good his
promise within six months of forming the government, even naming a
minister forprohibition in his Cabinet. And, yet, when the minister,
Ganeshi Lal, stepped into his office in March 1998 and announced with a
smile, "Aaj se sharab bandi khatam (Prohibition ends from today)," the people gathered there burst into applause.
Prohibition
lasted 21 months. It cost the state government Rs 1,300 crore in excise
revenue. For years after that, the administration grappled with nearly
100,000 alcohol-related cases in courts, a stock of 1.3 million seized
bottles, and 16 hooch accidents, which left 60 dead.
When
he announced prohibition, Bansi Lal declared: "I would rather cut grass
for a livelihood than lift prohibition." After succumbing to pressure
from alliance partners and others, and lifting prohibition, he remarked:
"When the people don't want prohibition any longer, sacrificing a
hugeexcise revenue is meaningless."
Nor was
Bansi Lal the first to do a U-turn on a policy that is sensitive for its
political, economic and administrative ramifications. In 1990, the
women of Dubbagunta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh's Nellore
district, began an anti-arrack agitation. The put pressure on men to
swear that they would stop drinking, physically restrained habitual
drinkers, attacked liquor shops and godowns and fought with the police,
liquor mafia and those who frequented liquor shops.Read More.
