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Opinion

Lessons from Assam

Labour movement must direct its fight against liquor mafia And deliberate over ways to stop such tragedies from recurring

It was a heart-rending tragedy. When the news last came in, 145 poor tea garden labourers in Assam had lost their lives on 24 February 2019 and another 200 were struggling for their lives in the hospital with around 30 of them in a serious condition. A tragedy definitely preventable and it should not have occurred at all in the first place.

Now that the tragedy has struck, it is time for catharsis. All civilised and reasonable people not only in the State of Assam but all over the country should seriously ponder over as to how to stop such tragedies from recurring. Assam is not an isolated case. Hardly a week before that, nearly 100 lives were lost in similar hooch tragedies in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report on Accidental Deaths and Suicides for 2015, deaths due to consumption of illicit/poisonous liquor numbered 1699 in 2014 and there were 1522 deaths in 2015 in a total of 1699 incidents of spurious liquor consumption. Invariably, it is the poor labourers and slum-dwellers who pay the price with their lives.

And the Assam disaster was not the handiwork of some isolated bootleggers brewing a few litres of illicit alcohol. The arrests indicate that an illicit arrack factory owner was behind it. In other words, illicit brewing is thriving as an industry in the plantation areas. The labour organisers working among plantation labourers clearly point to a criminal nexus of excise officials and the illicit liquor mafia. After all, it can thrive as an industry only if enforcement is virtually absent and abdicated. The problem is much deeper than mere collusion for bribes. The casteist mentality of the Assamese bureaucratic elite dominated by upper castes as well as the callous attitude of the plantation managements make them traditionally look down upon the tea tribes as doormats not deserving any protective measure. Nobody in power cares for their well-being.

After this grave tragedy, only two excise officials have been suspended. The episode cast a shadow on the Excise Minister Hemanta Biswa Sarma, an expert in floor-crossing who was instrumental in bringing BJP to power in Assam. He didn't think it fit to tender his resignation for his failure to check this horrendous catastrophe.

The Assam liquor mafia are not some small-time petty crooks. On October 4, 2018, the Central Enforcement Directorate itself had to step in and arrest one Rajesh Kumar Jalan, popularly known as the Assam liquor mafia don, for money laundering. In other words, they belong to such a big league attracting Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases. The PMLA case was only the tip of the iceberg.

The arrest revealed much more. In fact, Rajesh Kumar Jalan had already been arrested once in 2016 by the State CID for being the mastermind behind a liquor scam in which liquor cartons were illegally transported from a warehouse on the basis of forged documents between 2012 and 2015. In this process, an amount of Rs.19.86 crore as excise revenue and over Rs.21.86 crore as VAT, which should have reached the State exchequer, were misappropriated by Jalan in connivance with Excise Department officials. Jalan was arrested by the state CID in December 2016 and later charge-sheeted. Several Excise officials were also charge-sheeted by the CID. But he was not just roaming free but his illicit liquor business has been thriving till his arrest again by the ED on 4 October under PMLA. All the Assam government could do was to file a weak charge sheet and Jalan promptly came out on bail on 3 February 2019, a mere 20 days before this tragedy struck.

The modus operandi is like this. As per Rule 162 of the Assam Excise Rules 2016, tenders are given for the contractors to transport spirit from the distilleries and supply it to licensed vendors in a specified area for a specified period. As it used to happen in Tamil Nadu, the liquor sold in the retail liquor vends are usually three to four-fold the quantity of liquor officially released by the distilleries. The illicit liquor from the contractors who are part of the liquor mafia makes up the difference. Sometimes, excess liquor is lifted from the distilleries themselves rather than what is shown in the record books, thereby evading excise and VAT tax.

The toxic spurious liquor enters the scene here. Actually, the hooch is costlier if it is made in smaller quantities compared to huge distilleries. To bring down the cost the liquor mafia adulterates ethyl alcohol with methyl alcohol (methanol), which is sheer poison. 10 ml of pure methanol can blind and 15 ml can potentially kill. It is mixed with water and passed off as consumable alcohol but it can kill if the methanol concentration in water exceeds 2 per cent.

As per the official data provided by the State Excise Department In Assam, an average of 1.75 lakh bottles beer and 2.34 lakh bottles Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) are consumed daily through authorised vendors in the State. The quantity of illicit liquor could be several-fold more. Periodically, the top bureaucracy engages in posturing for public consumption. On a single day, on August 10, 2018, the Assam enforcement officials destroyed illicit contraband of over six lakh bottles of IMFL and 17,410 cases of beer! That shows the extent of the malady! As long as the liquor mafia-bureaucracy nexus remains intact, the labourers' lives would be in danger.

Alcoholism among workers is an internal problem the labour movement has to address. It is the womenfolk who are worst hit due to this, as their resources are taken away and they become targets of domestic violence. Many parts of the country, particularly Andhra Pradesh, have witnessed glorious anti-liquor movements smashing illegal liquor vends. Going beyond a question of internal reform, it is matter of life and death. The labour movement has to direct its ire against the liquor mafia and eliminate it.

(The views expressed are strictly personal)

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