By
B. Sivaraman
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—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 4 October 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 chargesheet 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 it
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%.
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 10 August 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. (IPA Service)
The post Trade Unions Must Take Lessons From Assam Hooch Tragedy appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
