Shashi Tharoor faults liquor policy

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has never hidden his irritation at the former UDF government’s move to ban liquor consumption. Now, the death of 18 men in Bihar after consuming illicit liquor in August, has offered Mr Tharoor a fresh context to launch another round of sarcasm-dripping attack on the prohibition policy which according to him is the manifestation of the Indian politician’s “self-righteous urge to improve their fellow citizens.”

And this time, just when his party was narrowing differences and unitedly using Prohibition to put the LDF on the back foot, Mr Tharoor has taken his criticism global. In a piece titled ‘India’s Prohibition Hypocrisy’ in Project Syndicate, the site that features exclusive contributions by the world’s top opinion leaders, Mr Tharoor mocks the moralism that prompted UDF to announce the “economically devastating” policy.

“Kerala’s leaders should have known that their state could not afford to do without widely available, heavily taxed liquor. But they began to implement the policy anyway,” he added. He even heaves a sigh of relief that the LDF government had promised to rollback prohibition. “So Kerala is no longer hurtling toward disaster in the name of saving people from themselves,” he said. Mr Tharoor’s sneer comes at a time when the state leaders of the Congress have seemingly set aside their differences and are attempting to paint LDF’s attempts to dump Prohibition as a betrayal.

A combative KPCC president V.M. Sudheeran has asked the LDF to first conduct a referendum before scrapping prohibition. Though it was a game of political one-upmanship that led to the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy to announce total prohibition, post-elections the party has realised that the liquor issue still commands a huge emotional draw.

Even Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, who had earlier questioned the political efficacy of the policy, has protested against perceived attempts to dilute the UDF policy. Mr Tharoor suggested that the state’s famed social welfare programmes were kept alive by the bounty from liquor sales. He said attracting talent and investment from abroad would bec-ome much more difficult if prohibition hampered the state’s quality of life.