The protagonists of conversionâ€“reconversion debates may kindly enlighten us Keralites as to the way in which we can convert out of our Malayalee provinciality.

Kerala, the great land of paradoxes, is today a fertile ground of hypocrisy and malarkey. This â€˜enlightenedâ€™ state could be first or second in the pecking order of alcohol consumption, but still wants to give out an impression that prohibition is its guiding spirit. As politicians play to the gallery, all the institutions want to prove the point that the Malayalee loves only milk and honey.

Alcohol, IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) as the Malayalee would love to call it, is the top contributor to the government kitty: around Rs 10,000 crore annually. Every year, the government would hike the tax on liquor to extract the maximum. Still, it vouches before the masses that the cardinal objective is to make the Malayalee a teetotaler.

As things stand, Kerala will have only five-star bars. If an average mallu wants to consume IMFL, after procuring a bottle in these trying times (the average waiting time in the queue at state-run liquor outlets is 45 minutes) it has to be in a mobile bar. Already, he has innovated to convert his autorickshaw into a bar. The government sells the booze, but doesnâ€™t permit him to consume it peacefully under a roof.

weapon. AK Antony used it on a mass scale in Kerala when he banned the cheap liquor, arrack, in 1995. It did not fetch him the desired votes. The Left and Right which came to power since couldnâ€™t pull the plug fearing religious fatwas. The state has become a land of IMFL and bars the most profitable proposition of a thriving consumer society.

All the studies have proved one point: the arrack ban made the average mallu poorer as he had to shell out almost ten times more to get the same kick. After two decades, disciples of Antony are serving the same wine in a different bottle, which has been hailed by religious leaders and granted a stamp of approval by the judiciary.

Prohibition as a policy tool is a failure world over. Still, the Malayalee wants to believe that he is an exception. This is where the land of paradoxes turns to be the quagmire of malarkey. The devotees of Church who are served with endless â€˜pastoral lettersâ€™ lead the tippler list.

Still our clergy thinks that at the stroke on order one can change his mindset. The toddy shops in Kerala sell twenty times more than the total production of toddy â€“ the deficit is made up by a chemical powder â€“ and we tend to believe that illicit liquor will never invade us fearing the khaki and boots.

Centuries old reformation movements made the Malayalee a unique species. He attained impeccable social indices of the West with hardly one-twentieth of the per capita income. The huge social investment coupled with egalitarian imbibing helped him cross the seas to fish for fortunes.

All these feats are getting drowned in the whirlpool of hypocrisy as he tends to feast on abject contradictions. He is the one who leaves a Rs 1,000 per day job to the Bengali immigrant and travels all the way to Saudi Arabia for a monthly salary of 750 riyals (Rs 12,000).

He is the one who props up the decadent fleet of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation by paying more than Rs 100 crore monthly in the form of tax and still roots for his own state-run airline. The protagonists of conversionâ€“reconversion debates may kindly enlighten us Keralites as to the way in which we can convert out of our mallu provinciality.

http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/et-commentary/alcohol-has-always-been-a-political-weapon-in-kerala/

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Hic, Hic, Hurray To A Land Of Hypocrisy! (John Brittas)