oppn parties Liquor Shops Open In Lockdown - It Happens Only In India

News Snippets

  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
oppn parties
Liquor Shops Open In Lockdown - It Happens Only In India

By Slogger
First publised on 2020-03-24 11:03:59

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Holding an extreme view and carting the ball out of the park is what interests him most. He is a hard hitter at all times. Fasten your seatbelts and read.

Punjab and Kerala have unwittingly (or given the financials involved, maybe knowingly) classified liquor as an essential item and have allowed liquor shops to remain open during the lockdown. Hence, tipplers need not worry. Their elected representatives have for once acknowledged their pain and have done something to alleviate it.

It is another matter that in these times, your daily alcohol intake is less important than protecting you from Covid-19. One had the occasion to witness the mad scramble (in Kolkata) outside liquor shops the day before the lockdown started in West Bengal. Disregarding all safety norms, people were standing in queues without maintaining a safe distance, were spitting on the roads, pushing each other and shouting in each others' faces. If even one of them was an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, it was a sure recipe for community transmission.

In any case, if people are so addicted to the brew, they needed to have the sense to stock up before the lockdown. There is absolutely no need to keep liquor shops open. It defeats the purpose if you allow things which lead people to party with friends and liquor is definitely one of them. Even if people decide to stay at home, they might have the urge to party if they know liquor shops are open. Also, states bordering Punjab and Kerala have kept liquor shops closed. Hence, people from those states will make a beeline for border towns in the two states to buy liquor, adding to the crowds and increasing the risk.

In fact, such is the draw of liquor that when people came to know that hand sanitizer is made up almost entirely of alcohol, they started wondering whether direct consumption of liquor would give them immunity from getting infected since sanitizing hands was said to prevent infection. There was a rumour in the US that spraying the body with alcohol would prevent one from getting infected.

But the Punjab and Kerala governments have done a disservice to the community by allowing liquor shops to remain open during the lockdown. In India, there are many things that a given set of people can call essential. If the administration is to allow shops selling those things to keep open, there would be no lockdown for all practical purposes. Drinking liquor is the private preference of the citizens and no one can object to that if it is not done in a public place. But congregating before liquor shops during a lockdown is not to be allowed for health reasons.

Picture not of actual crowds during the lockdown but used for representational purpose