Aspects Of Our "Common Loss"

The news that Air India is to be the “official carrier” to the Commonwealth Games is hilarious. I suggest the officials concerned call this the “commonloss games.”

Of course, our brainless and predatory officialdom causes huge common losses to us all – but none more that the Customs and the Excise baboons. I have only just written about the customs department and the losses they inflict upon our society, here; today, I would like to focus on the excisewallahs. They are Evil Incarnate. It is one thing to collect a small tax on booze painlessly – and even Adam Smith suggested a malt tax – but it is quite another thing when the tax collectors get to control the entire booze market with a plethora of restrictions, rules, regulations, and licenses, all based on “subordinate legislation,” which is the lowest form of legislation, just as excisewallahs are the lowest form of human life.

This “commonloss” is most visible in New Delhi, where our blind rulers reside. Blind in the sense that “their corrupt ways have finally made them blind,” as in the Dylan song. Recall my post yesterday wherein I spoke of the fantastic Rs. 50,000 fine these excisewallahs are about to impose on anyone found “serving liquor without a valid license.” Allow me to describe the drinking scene in Delhi, on the ground.

Since bars are few and unaffordable in Delhi, most of the drinking goes on surreptitiously, in dark street corners, inside cars, in all kinds of shady places. Indeed, visit any sarkaari booze shop in Delhi and you will find, quite close to it, a private shop selling bottled water, soft drinks and plastic glasses. If you stick around the area for a while you will gather what is happening: ordinary people buy a “quarter” (180ml) bottle of some harsh grog, pick up water and a glass next door – and head for the nearest dark corner.

I joined a group of such happy drinkers in a dark corner some weeks ago. We all poured our drinks and I said “cheers” and took a small sip. All the other guys put their glasses to their mouths and did an incredible “bottoms up” – because they were too scared to hang around too long dithering over their drinks. No one wants to fall foul of the cops.

If anything, drinking in this manner is extremely uncivilized. We are expected to enjoy our drinks, sip them slowly, roll the fluid about the mouth and feel the taste. Enjoy! My companions in the dark corner did not enjoy their drinks at all. Their faces, after knocking back stiff harsh grogs in one shot, reflected great suffering rather than enjoyment. I felt sorry for them – and for their livers. And my hatred for the excisewallahs grew a lot stronger.

What is the “common loss” here?

There is something called the “hospitality trade.” If this trade was freed from the excisewallahs' grip, then, just as businessmen are selling water and plastic glasses to boozers today, businessmen would lay out chairs and tables for them, serve snacks, play music, call in some nautch-girls to perform, and allow everyone to enjoy their drinks.

I am even more certain that such bars should be allowed to flourish in the slums – where there are already many businesses flourishing, including illegal hooch. People should be encouraged to sit, enjoy, and drink slowly. And the booze should be of good quality – for which taxation must come down drastically.

This is the one reason why I was so happy in Mangalore. It is a city where drinking out is cheap. Even a poor man would sit down at a bar, have his 3 large pegs, eat some food, and go away happy. Ditto in Pondicherry, where I lived a few years once. Ditto in Goa. There are so many bars for poor people in Goa. None drink furtively in dark street corners. And the hospitality trade is flourishing. This is good for tourism.

If a systematic audit were to be conducted of the Customs and Excise departments, I am confident it would reveal that they cause more losses to the public than the revenue they collect for The Chacha State. Indeed, they represent a hidden tyranny. They must be abolished.