Indian States Take A Detour To Avoid Highway Alcohol Ban

By Shakir Husain NEW DELHI, April 10 (Bernama) -- When India's Supreme Court banned the sale and consumption of alcohol within 500 metres of distance from highways, state governments took a legal detour to skirt the ban. Some portions of the national and state highways affected by the ban simply changed into "district roads." No highways, no ban. In the hierarchy of roads in India, national highways are better roads, built and managed by federal transport departments. District or urban roads are the responsibility of state governments or local authorities. By renaming their highways as district roads, the states are determined to save their billions of dollars in tax revenues from the alcohol trade. But they will now also be responsible for maintaining the highways-turned-into-district-roads. So their net gain from this bureaucratic exercise will only be known later. More importantly, questions are being asked whether states have the resources and capacity to maintain the quality standards of the national highway authority. Safety remains a major concern on India's roads whether they are highways or not. The Supreme Court's recent decision tried to make roads safer by curbing drunken driving. If the states skimp on road maintenance, they would be contributing to India's worrying record on road accidents. In the case of towns and municipal corporations with less than 20,000 population, the ban applies within 220 metres. It won't be surprising if some towns actually start recounting their population. The clamour for prohibition is growing in the country where 146,000 people were killed in road accidents in 2015, according to government statistics. More than thrice that number were injured in about half a million accidents. According to one petition cited in the local media, 2015 recorded an average of 1,374 accidents and 400 deaths per day. Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh are among the states with high road death toll. Alcohol is just one factor in the high death toll on Indian roads. Poor road conditions, bad driving skills and lax enforcement of traffic rules also significantly contribute to road accidents. It is not uncommon to see overloaded trucks, overcrowded passenger buses and car drivers violating speed limits and traffic rules. The federal government aims to reduce road fatalities by 50 per cent by 2020. In recent years, India has seen a big increase in its highway construction. These highways have boosted real estate activity and encouraged thousands of new food and beverage outlets to cater to the growing vehicle traffic. Huge investment has gone into developing alcohol shops, restaurants, pubs and hotels. Clearly, the state governments renaming their highways as district roads are keen to avoid disruption to a key revenue stream. But India's top court has expressed concern about the huge number of licences the states have issued to alcohol vendors. It wants to curb the sale, consumption, as well as the "visibility" of alcohol in signage and advertisements. Some say the court's order is a judicial overreach, but the judges are unmoved. They say the ban is needed to save human lives lost as a result of drunken driving. -- BERNAMA