Morung File Photo
Our Correspondent
Mokokchung | August 9
As the debate rages on in Nagaland over the Nagaland Liquor Total Prohibition Act (NLTP), it is routine business in this peaceful town of Mokokchung where an easy bottle of alcohol is available for regular drinkers. While the society especially the church might term drinking a sin, alcohol-users span from the aged to the teenaged.
“On an average day, more than hundred people come to my house to drink, they come mostly in the evening,” says a bootlegger during a casual conversation. “They come even in the early morning for a bottle. That’s why my family cannot have a sound sleep at night also,” he adds. On being asked what he thinks about the prohibition Act, the bootlegger says “Whether there is an Act or not, as long as there are drinkers, there will be alcohol in the society. It’s very near to Mariani (Assam) people can just go and buy whatever they want.”
Other sellers have the same story, its pure business – they sell, drinkers buy. Many feed their families with the money earned selling alcohol. Interestingly, just recently, the Superintendent of Excise convened a coordination meeting with the eighteen wards’ chairmen of the town where the Excise SP solicited their help to check the sale of alcohol in their respective wards and assist the Excise department. The truth is, the uniformed personnel themselves are a regular sight in booze joints.
“They (uniformed personnel) come to drink here, and after some time they will raid this place,” said a youth sarcastically, and holding up a cup in a booze joint. A taxi driver waiting for passengers pointed to a person carrying a plastic bag: “He is from the Excise department posted at the gate, and he is carrying rum (the outline of the man’s bag was unmistakably that of liquor bottles).” As a casual conversation ensued, the taxi driver asserted: “This Prohibition should be lifted. It is not serving any purpose. It is simply making people more corrupted and people are losing a lot of money through it.”
Youths would be the more vocal lot. A prominent student leader once opined that “if the church really wants to bring in prohibition then they should perhaps go into the wine houses, sit there and give a prayer meeting; then surely the people would not come to that place when the church person is in the wine house, since we are all Christians.” But some youths still want prohibition. “I would want not only alcohol, but even tobacco, ‘gutkha’ etc,” said an entrepreneur who is also a prominent journalist. The Excise department and the Assam Rifles are doing its part in the cause of prohibition.
Just a few months ago, the Mokokchung Police seized a huge consignment of IMFL from a truck heading to Mokokchung. Weeks later, the 9th Assam Rifles seized another truckload of IMFL; the amount of both the catches runs into lakhs of rupees. However, the affect of the seizures was immediate.
“Now the price of even a bottle of McDowell Rum is now 280 rupees,” says a self-confessed regular drinker. Earlier it was only Rs 200. He surmises that the rise in prices would be because of the seizures of IMFL by the police and the Assam Rifles. A commerce student (studying in Dimapur) assessed that such seizures affect the entire town. Because ultimately it is the drinkers who pay for the seized alcohol – they have to out higher payments for the alcohol. Paying more for the alcohol, ironically, also affects the drinkers’ family – wife and children – financially.
The debate on prohibition runs, and people carry on their own lives peacefully. But, somewhere along the line, the NLTP Act comes into the question.
