Social Impact of drinking

Drinking - I mean consumption of Alcohol. This is the biggest social issues today in India. Most of the crimes and accidents today happen due to the consumption of Alcohol.

Why are we not able to handle this issue effectively? There are various reasons. Here are my thoughts on the social impact this habit is bringing to our society.

The first and foremost is the abuse of females at home. There are millions of cases in rural and in some case urban society where a drunk husband beats up his wife. In most cases, they beat up their wife to steal money for consuming alcohol.

Currently there is an active campaign happening in Tamil Nadu for ban on liquor and especially on the government licensed Liquor shops. This comes from the outbreak of many poor family housewives who complain that most of their incomes goes in drinking.  Some people cause nuisance in public after drinking as most of these shops are on the main streets.

So why is government not able to apply a ban on these shops? There is a study which tells that most of these shops are owned by ruling and opposition party politicians who fear loss on income. The government roughly earns 20,000 crores of money every year due to these shops which is quite a revenue which they don’t want to do away with. Then what is the solution. There has to be alternative ways of income which the government needs to plan. Selling poisonous drink is not an acceptable way of income for the government.

The government can’t be blamed completely as well. The society on its own has to revolt strongly as well. Breaking few shops or doing a one off protest during elections will not help the cause. There has been a long and strong protest which needs to bring in the attention of national and international media.

Another major issue of alcohol consumption is drunken driving. This is a very serious issue. Most of the accidents that happens is because the driver is under the influence of alcohol. Though there are traffic laws implementing fine on drunken driving it is not enough. I only see this as an income earning option for the police. They normally are seen standing a few metres away from the shops, bars etc and waiting to catch drunken driving. The penalty is not strong enough to prevent such crimes.

Studies reveal that even biggest of crimes like murders and rapes are done under the influence of alcohol. Recently I saw images on Whats App of school going girls and boys under the influence of alcohol. This is a very serious issues. They are the future of our society and seeing them under the influence of alcohol is very disturbing.

Even in our movies there are scenes of actors smoking and drinking with a statutory warning displayed to avoid censorship. What kind of censorship is that? Who reads the small statutory warning while watching the movie? It directly influences the minds of the fans who want to idolize their favorite actors. Even the film personalities have a moral responsibility towards society.

Unless alcohol is abolished our future society cannot be a safe one.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.