WHILE many poor and
marginalised OBCs, SCs and STs have borne the disproportionate brunt
of Nitish Kumar’s
prohibition crackdown — accounting for, as an investigation by The Indian
Express (editions
of May 28 and 29) has shown, a higher share of their population inside
prison than outside — the Bihar Chief Minister has, by this action, succeeded
in carving out for himself a distinct new political constituency: women.
In village after village, The
Indian Express reported in its Wednesday editions, a common refrain among women
is that prohibition has led to a decline in the incidents of domestic
violence, and left families with more money in hand at the end of the
month. Many women, especially those married to alcoholics, say they feel empowered
like never before.
An indicator that Nitish Kumar
has been able to tap into this spring of goodwill lies in the fact that the participation
of women in Assembly elections in Bihar surpassed that of men in 2010, when
the Chief Minister sought re-election at the end of his first full term.
Election Commission data analysed
by The Indian Express show that while the turnout of women in the elections of
February 2000, February 2005, and October 2005 lagged behind that of men, this
gap narrowed from 17.43% to just 2.53% over this period. The inflection point
was reached in the elections held in October-November 2010, when the turnout of
women voters was 3.37 percentage points more than that of men (54.49% to
51.12%). And in the elections of October-November 2015, the voting
percentage among women was a significant 7.16 percentage points higher than
among men (60.48% to 53.32%).
The prohibition law, which
Nitish’s government brought within six months of coming to power in 2015 was
only one, though perhaps the most potent, of the elements of his strategy to
create and nurture a political constituency among women. In 2006, in the
early part of his first full term, the Chief Minister had reserved 50% seats
in panchayat and local body elections for women, broadening the scope for
their political training at the grassroots level. In that same year, he launched
a bicycle scheme for schoolgoing girls — a decision to which is credited
the manifold jump in the enrolment of girls in secondary (from 1 lakh in
2007 to 7 lakh in 2017) and senior secondary (from 70,000 in 2007 to 3.5 lakh
in 2017) education, and which has since been replicated in several states
across the country. And before the 2015 elections, Nitish promised — apart
from prohibition — 35% reservation for women in state government jobs.
Prohibition had seemed an odd
move, given that Nitish had actually liberalised the liquor trade to boost
the state’s revenues during his first full term in power. As the network of
licensed liquor shops spread, revenues zoomed from Rs 500 crore in 2005 to
about Rs 4,000 crore in 2014-15. But this greater access to alcohol not only
invited criticism from his political adversaries, it also appeared to directly
impact rural poor women, increased drinking by whose menfolk started to eat
into meagre household earnings.
According to people close to
Nitish Kumar, prohibition was the Chief Minister’s response to the concerns of
the constituency of women that he had so carefully built up in his first two
terms from 2005. It was subjectively assessed that the enhanced access to
liquor, especially among the lower caste poor communities, was turning into a
social menace of which women were the silent, helpless victims.
Unlike Nitish, however, Lalu
Prasad’s RJD was never comfortable with idea of the liquor ban — in significant
part because Yadavs, the party’s core base, make up a large chunk of liquor
licencees. But the RJD, desperate as it was to defeat the BJP in the Mahagathbandhan
with the JD(U) and Congress, did not oppose the Chief Minister’s plans ahead of
the 2015 elections.
With Nitish back in the NDA, the
political situation now is completely different. While the Chief Minister
continues to talk about prohibition as his core agenda, he is believed to be
increasingly concerned about a potential backlash from the Scheduled Castes,
some of whom have traditionally earned their living by brewing and selling
country liquor. Recent defeats for the NDA in the byelections for the
Araria Lok Sabha seat and Jehanabad Assembly seat indicate that a section of
Mahadalits, a constituency that Nitish created, may be drifting away.
The Chief Minister has made his choice
of prohibition at the cost of a substantial loss of revenue for his resource
poor state. It is a testimony to the importance of liquor revenue that states
did not allow it to be brought under the Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime
when Parliament passed the law in 2016.
Credit: Indian Express Explained (http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/prohibition-in-bihar-why-nitish-kumar-says-no-to-liquor-5197752/)
Reach Us
if you face difficulty in understanding the above article.
