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17 February 2017

Ban on beer sales near highways

So Indian drivers don’t just collectively suffer from road rage, many of them actually drive under the influence. Drunk driving on Indian highways is a menace that has largely remained unaffected by measures adopted to ensure road safety.

Therefore, the Supreme Court ordered in December 2017 that as of 1 April 2017 there shall be no liquor shops within 500 metres on either side of national or state highways. Existing shops will have to be closed. This could affect about half of India’s 66,000 licenced liquor shops, Carlsberg said on 8 February 2017. The Danish brewer fears that beer consumption could decline as well as incomes for the states. To compensate for the volume loss, a logical response would be to raise prices for beer. However, because of the states exercising strict price controls, price hikes are out of the question.

This being India, it all depends however, on how effectively the ban is implemented.

Nonetheless, the ban could help save lives. An analysis of road accident data for 2015 reveals that more than 1,300 accidents and 400 deaths take place every day on Indian roads, tallying up to 146,000 fatalities, which awards India the dubious title of being a country with one of the highest road fatality rates, it was reported.

Going by the 2015 data, fewer than five percent of the accidents were caused by drunk driving, but statistics don’t always tell the real story. In many cases, the drunk driving angle is ignored by police when filing reports. This is done, either due to humanitarian considerations or by bribes, to ensure that the victims or their families are not denied insurance benefits. So, the proportion of accidents caused by alcohol intake could actually be much higher.

It is feared that, while the ban will certainly help limit access to alcohol, it will not stop people from driving drunk.

The ban is a pertinent reminder that India is a prohibitionist country after all and might not become the next China in terms of beer consumption ever. Already, alcohol is banned in four Indian states (Gujarat, Bihar, Manipur and Nagaland) and the union territory of Lakshadweep. There’s a partial ban on sale of alcohol in the southern state of Kerala.

Carlsberg said that India’s domestic beer output rose 2 to 3 percent in 2016 only, reaching perhaps 21 million hl.

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