By Sidharth Mishra

Take a drive across the city and you would find huge hoardings with chief minister Arvind Kejriwal hawking some inane scheme or other. One such hoarding displayed these days says that even children from middle class poor families can now speak English, courtesy some Delhi government scheme.

Now one wonders what makes Delhi government categorize middle class families as poor. Secondly and more importantly, what makes him believe that the children from these families were waiting all the while for Kejriwal to launch a scheme to start learning English language? These hoardings are nothing more than an attempt by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership to paper over the cracks which has come to manifest the functioning of the Delhi government.

This newspaper last Friday broke the news of the Delhi government deciding on the reversal of the new excise policy. This move has come in the face of the charges of huge corruption against the deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia in the allotment of the liquor vends and the probe being carried out by the various agencies.

The charges against the government includes cartelisation, facilitating monopolies and favoring blacklisted firms. There are sufficient evidences in the public domain to back these charges, which probably has made the Delhi government go for a rethink, for the reasons of saving its own skin.

No wonder that a normally aggressive Arvind Kejriwal is a going soft on the aggressive position taken on several issues by the Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena, including the liquor policy. For Delhi government, which often spends beyond its income, a liberal excise policy was seen as a move to keep the cash box clinging. That did not happen as in eight months just one-fifth of the targeted 10000 crore annual revenue could be raised.

While the policy did not exactly help the finances of Delhi government, there charges that firms were favoured to help the ruling party in Delhi build its own coffers. No wonder, with his party on the backfoot, the chief minister now wants to smoke the peace pipe with the office of the Lieutenant Governor, something which he has never done with Saxena’s predecessors, be it Najib Jung or a more than ‘cooperative’ Anil Baijal.    

Without commenting on the merit of the charges levelled, we should not also forget the new excise policy created a new social concern. The cheap availability of liquor, one free bottle with every bottle purchased, created upheaval in several households. The joke is since Kejriwal gave women a free ride in the buses, they should not grudge a free liquor bottle to their spouses even if it all ended in the cases of domestic violence.   

While the long queues outside the liquor stores across the city have become an eyesore, there are problems beyond them too. The new excise policy entailed that was no need of getting temporary P-10 licence for serving liquor at weddings, parties and other such events at licensed premises of banquet halls, farm houses, motels and similar venues.

The licensed premises included farm houses, banquet halls and motels. These and other party venues having L-38 licence were allowed to host any type of entertainment activities such as live singing performances by professionals, dancing, and karaoke and live bands.

Without wanting to sound as an advocate of complete prohibition, one cannot but be critical of the liberal liquor policy of the Delhi. It’s true that prohibition leads to the menace of life threatening sale of illicit liquor and also loss of revenue to the government. However, the government at the same time cannot seen to be acting as liquor hawkers. 

(The writer is Author and President, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice)