NUISANCE AND SOCIAL DRINKING

From 2016, the Government of Goa – starting from the term of former Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar – has tried to tackle the menace of drunken tourists by legislating a ban on drinking in all public spaces which are notified as “No Alcohol Consumption Zones”. Of course the law has been implemented neither in letter nor spirit. About a month ago, it was reported that the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar planned to introduce another law that would impose even more stringent fines than before, and also amend the Garbage Management Act to tackle the joint problem of drunken nuisance and littering.

The 2016 amendment made to the Goa Excise Duty Act, 1964 confirms that the ostensible motive for banning drinking in public spaces is the nuisance created by drunken tourists. When the proposed amendment was introduced in the assembly, the statement of Objects and Reasons set out that the “Government is receiving a number of complaints of consumption of liquor in open spaces, public places, beaches, State and National highways; mostly by visiting tourists. Upon consumption of liquor, the bottles and cans are strewn around causing environmental degradation and…harm to pedestrians accessing the area. Such persons after being in an inebriated state, cause nuisance to general public, disturb the peaceful order in the area and cause local tension, thereby posing a law and order situation on regular basis. The Bill, therefore, seeks to empower the Government to declare a space/place/area in the State of Goa as ‘No Alcohol Consumption Zone’”.

Though the logic of the amendment seems justifiable and the fact that the government will declare a particular place as ‘No Alcohol Consumption Zone’ through a gazette notification as eminently transparent, the situation is not that simple. For one, while the amendment has made drinking in public a punishable offense, it has not properly defined the parameters of which spaces can be notified as ‘No Alcohol Consumption Zones’. Even if we concede that the spirit of the amendment is directed towards regulating the public space of a beach, it still proves to be problematic as many local Goans picnic on the beach with friends and family. They take along with them alcohol and food. Is this activity, part of the lives of Goans for so many years, also to be criminalized and made punishable by law? After all, the law is applicable to all, even if it was made because, or to stop the nuisance, of unruly tourists. In this context, Parrikar’s comment in September 2017, gives us cause for concern. He reportedly said, “If someone wants to drink (liquor), they should drink inside and not in public places”.

At this point, one needs to ask if the solution to unruly and drunk tourists – a problem that concerns law and order – will be solved by banning it in notified public spaces. The activity of drinking – or rather, social drinking – in itself is not the problem. The fact that the government feels that the problem will be tackled by giving more teeth to the Goa Excise Duty Act, 1964, which regulates the production and sale of alcohol and has nothing to do with public disorder, is itself suggestive of the manner in which the government views liquor consumption as a problem, and not the fact that tourists feel entitled to do as they please in Goa. In any case, the law will provide ample space for future police harassment of those who consume alcohol because consumption of alcohol is criminalized and not public disorder.

The ideology that the current government and many members of various political parties subscribe to is well-known. Of late many politicians across party lines have made crass and ignorant comments that appear to fly right in the face of the liberal and susegad ethos of Goa. In this context, the history of temperance movements in India can give us valuable insights as how political activism and the legislation of the state can end up creating a smokescreen by which various cultural practices end up as collateral damage.

In his doctoral study, “A World Without Drink: Temperance in Modern India, 1880-1940” (2013), Robert Eric Colvard discusses how the earliest protests against policies regulating the sale of alcohol were lead by toddy tapping communities and other communities traditionally producing alcohol. These protests were against unjust taxes imposed by the British, particularly against the Bombay Abkari Act, 1878, and not about the consumption of alcohol per se. However, a combination of Christian temperance activists with their Victorian morality and Indian nationalists essentially believing in a brahmanical Hindu morality created the fiction that the people in India were teetotalers. This fiction served the basis of the several prohibition laws in India and also created the notion that the consumption of alcohol was an aberration to Indian culture. And the bans that the government, both central and state, bring in force or plan to bring in force also rest on this idea that the consumption of alcohol is foreign to Indian culture.

In the context of Goa, the government seems to be unwilling to let go of the revenue it earns from liquor sale while at the same time wants to alter the place alcohol consumption has in Goan society. Even though the Goan government actively promotes local spirits, such as feni for export, we frequently hear such expressions of irrational fears as girls drinking, amongst others. This might lead us to wonder whether misguided attempts to curb unruly tourists may, in fact, end up slowly eroding one’s right to consume alcohol without causing a nuisance in a public space. The government has to take steps to maintain public order without interfering in the cultural rights of Goans.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 28 February, 2018)

“PUBLIC PURPOSE” AND AGGRESSIVE LAND ACQUISITION LAWS

The 2017 Monsoon session of the Goa Legislative Assembly ended about a month ago. In what could be construed as a remarkable show of governmental efficiency, six bills were passed and one referred back to the select committee for further deliberations and clarifications. Of these bills, The Goa Compensation to the Project Affected Persons and Vesting of Land in the Government Bill, 2017 and The Goa Requisition and Acquisition of Property Bill, 2017 have come under the scanner of activists due to the consequences such laws might have on the ownership of property, and especially of  marginalized communities. It is believed that a combination of these two laws would allow the government unfettered power in acquiring land from the people of Goa, to be disposed of as the government deems fit. In many ways, activists argue, such laws would secure the rights of investors over and above those of the common people of Goa. Goa is no stranger to such laws with the Investment Promotion Act, 2014 being at the centre of the Tiracol controversy.

What is cause for concern in The Goa Requisition Bill, 2017 is an absence of a proper definition of what constitutes “public purpose”. One should in fact ask: who constitutes this public? Goan society consists of multiple strata of communities who are unequal in terms of wealth, social status, and access to land. Mundkars do not have similar access to wealth and social status as, a bhatkar. The “public purpose” also claims to serve the landless. Around the beginning of 2017, the case of a small tribe, the Vanarmares, who were literally and figuratively living at the margins of Goan society came to light. They were landless and disenfranchised in multiple ways, and denied even the right to vote. Will such a bill or law enable the government to acquire land in favor of such communities? At the end of the day, the government needs to produce a meticulous report so that the Goan public is made aware of the consequences and ramifications of land acquisition legislations.

The aforementioned bills are not solely a creation of our times; they have a precedent in the past. The Land Acquisition Act, 1894, is said to be the forerunner of successive land acquisition or requisition acts in British and post-British India. What is crucial in these laws is the notion of “public purpose”, a claim made to justify such legislations. Interestingly, both the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, and The Goa Requisition Act, 2017, contain statements of “public purpose” in them. One can think of these laws as introduced in separate political and historical contexts: one by the British colonial state and the other by a democratically-elected government within sovereign India. Ideally, one would prefer the independent nation-state to completely move away from the practices of the colonial state; at least this is the assumption by which we try to function in a democracy.

Laws or bills like The Goa Requisition Act, 2017, are similarly structured as the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. For instance, the notion of what the law-makers understood by the acquisition of land for “public purpose” is same. The idea of “public purpose” in both these laws is rather a British colonial construct. Both the laws have provisions in them to acquire land to rehabilitate the landless [vide 1894 Act, sec. (3) (f) (v); 2017 Bill, sec. (2) (m) (v)]. Ironically, the same laws empower the government to clear slum areas [vide 1894 Act, sec. (3) (f) (vi); 2017 Bill, sec. (2) (m) (d) (iv)]. Thus, the law that could be used to acquire the land of slum-dwellers and therefore potentially evict them also claims to rehabilitate the landless. The law-makers in the 1894 and 2017 legislations act as if eviction and rehabilitation are not two sides of the same coin; what if a developmental project requires the land of those who dwell in slums?

Thus, one can suggest that the definition of “public purpose” has remained the same in the 1894 and 2017 laws. Indeed, it is common practice for states to follow laws and rules formulated by a previous political formation. For example, kingdoms and states in medieval Europe based many of their laws on older Roman laws. Similarly, one can understand that most of the laws formulated or amended in independent India were derived from the laws of the British colonial state. But 70 years after the departure of the colonial state, if practices pertaining to the colonial state still persist then there is an urgent need to change the way governance functions.

The abovementioned legislations can be juxtaposed alongside the notion of “public purpose” in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. While this law was a step forward, it was subsequently diluted to circumvent many of its progressive provisions. The 2013 Act not only has an elaborate list of what constitutes “public purpose” [vide sec. (2)], but it also  further states that prior consent of at least 80 percent of the affected people is necessary in the land acquisition for private companies and 70 percent in the case of public-private partnership. Such checks and balances are not visible in the draft of the Goa Land Requisition Bill, 2017.

In a situation where it is estimated that around 300 million are landless in India, land acquisition by the government per se should have led to an equitable distribution of resources. However, that is not the case, with private companies benefiting the most from such laws. The larger question, therefore, would be if such laws do indeed promote the interest of the public.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 13 September, 2017)