"Drink Alcohol, Be Healthy!"

“Do you know the problem of the ‘liquor policy’ of our government?”One of my friends asked. I wondered, as if I just came from Mars. It never even came to my mind that the Kerala Govt does have a liquor policy, except the fact that it runs many liquor shops in Kerala to promote drinking; in the same way we promote art and literature (Do we promote art and literature?). I immediately surfed the Internet and found one PDF copy of the liquor policy of the govt. I didn’t know that our rulers are so humorous. One of the main attractions of the document is ‘the basic idea of the govt is not to promote drinking, but to decrease the use of liquor among the Keralites’. With that mission, the govt has formed a new corporation, named Kerala State Beverages Corporation. Of course, the aim of the corporation is not to sell coffee, tea, or soft drinks, but liquor. Hey, why you are saying so, ‘beverage’ means not tea and coffee, but alcohol drink, don’t you know that? An average Keralite would wonder? According to Merriam- Webster Dictionary, ‘beverage’ means ‘a drinkable liquid’. However, for Kerala Beverages Corporation and majority of the people of Kerala, it means only alcohol. You are so naïve in thinking all this. The govt is selling liquor to give quality alcohol to the public, thereby limiting the chances of selling methanol, and at the end the aim is to control drinking in the final stage, the people reason. Then, why the govt banned soft drinks like Coca Cola, Pepsi etc, but leave alcohol as such, you may ask. You are completely wrong my friend, we are banning these drinks to show that we are fighting against the MNCs.

However, I cannot find fault with the governmental system because we are living in a country where a religious document such as the Sama-Veda talked about different ways to make liquor. The govt is trying to revive the ancient civilization by forming an institution such as KSBC, and the people are just supporting that endeavor of the govt!





For further reading, see here and here.