Sometime ago, a pipe-puffing sophisticate nabbed me and said: "Damn it! What does your Morarjibhai get out of crazy ideas like prohibition?" Before I could pull myself together for an answer, he shot out another question: "Why do you want to force me to give up my evening drink?" And he went on like that giving me a belly full of questions. Prohibition was not his only

Population control was another. He blasted the Janata Party policy, Raj Narain, and abstinence. "Without some coercion, mind you not excesses, India's illiterate masses cannot be made to see reason on babies," he concluded. How odd! Here was this gentleman advocating "restrained coercion" for population control, but was against any coercion in prohibition. In fact, he was against prohibition itself.

I can say without exaggeration that almost everyone, who is against prohibition, is also for some sort of compulsion in family planning. Being against nashabandi and for nasbandi at the same time is a class reaction of our elite. More crudely, it is plain double-think that characterizes our elite.

Personal Fad: There are many who think that prohibition is a personal fad of Morarji Desai and that once Morarji is called to his maker, that will be the end of it. Well, they are wrong! The general sentiment in India is against alcoholic drinks. Indians who drink, except the brazen westernized types, generally try to hide the fact.

Mrs Gandhi, as prime minister had once made a ridiculously unfactual statement that she does not drink, and her sons do not drink tea or coffee. Why did she need to lie like that? Because the overwhelming majority of Indians do not want those in high positions to "get high". On one occasion I had stated in public that out of 19 cabinet ministers, 12 drank. These unnamed 12 moved hell and high water to ensure that I did not name them.

Social Liberation: Prohibition is a part of our yet incomplete freedom struggle, and a vital component of our social liberation from the West. We Indians are physically free, but mentally not quite. In mannerisms, tastes and fashions our elite which sets the pace for the rest of society, takes its cues from the West. Long hair, bell-bottoms and LSD gained currency in India after it did in the West.

Even yoga became popular with our elite only after it caught the imagination of the West. Now India's upper classes have started cooing about Swami Bhaktivedanta and Muktananda because they are a rage in the USA. I can bet that if Americans started drinking their own urine, our avant garde generation will not hesitate for a moment.

I find therefore only two types of people in India who argue against prohibition. The first type is an unwitting tool of colonialism, and does not want redemption. The second type of person likes to drink but rationalizes this irrational desire in fancy arguments. There is nothing one can do about the first type, but the second type can be exposed for a hypocrite.

Rationalization: There are four principal arguments to rationalize drinking and oppose prohibition. First, prohibition curbs one's liberty. Piloo Mody said: "I can do without a drink, but I cannot do without the right to drink." To begin with, there is no such thing as an uncurbed right to drink or eat. Democratic societies have laid down very strict laws on what can be consumed and what cannot.

In the USA and in India, there are a wide variety of food and drug control laws. These regulations actually increase the confidence with which one can consume food and drugs. Without these restrictions, one can never be sure what one is getting. To talk of unabridged rights in relation to alcoholic drinks is absurd. Only speech, assembly, association and choice of occupation, can be uncurbed rights. There may be penalties for misuse of these rights, but no curbs.

Besides, whose liberty does prohibition effect? According to the Economic Times survey, 15 per cent of India's adult population drinks, and only 5 per cent drink more than once a month. These 5 per cent create a wide variety of social problems. They destroy the liberty of their family members particularly the women folk and children.

That is why women who are 50 per cent of the population favour prohibition. When M.G. Ramachandran made in 1973 a vow to bring prohibition to Tamil Nadu, women voted massively for him in the Dindigul by election to the Lok Sabha. If a referendum is taken in India, 80 per cent would vote for prohibition. It increases the area of liberty, not reduces it.

Moderation: Second, some argue that drinking in moderation is all right, but getting drunk is bad. The former should be allowed, the latter curbed ("temperance"). That is like saying that carrying a loaded gun is all right but shooting with it is bad. In the Frontier West, cowboys carrying guns have been allowed.

But there was no end to murder and lawlessness. It was only when carrying any weapon was banned that law and order could be established. One is the logical consequence of the other. Drinking in moderation is the gateway of alcoholism. The former leads to the latter.

Access to drinking is licence to excess. It is easier to stop drinking altogether than to regulate it within bounds. There is more widespread excess drinking in Thailand, Nepal or Japan where there is no prohibition than there is in India.

Third, it is said that prohibition will lead to great revenue loss to the state governments - something like Rs 450 crore - as a consequence of which development programmes will suffer. I do not know who thought up this argument but he was not an economist. The logic simplified is as follows: prohibition will discourage people from buying liquor bottles and hence from paying sales tax on the otherwise intended purchase. This will result in a revenue loss.

The argument is vapid because if a person does not buy liquor bottles, he will purchase something else and pay sales tax on that item. So the loss due to prohibition will be compensated from revenue from some other commodities. It is ironic that sales tax itself was introduced into the fiscal system decades ago to compensate for the loss of excise revenue resulting from a shut-down of booze factories.

Uses of Alcohol: India produces 400 million litres of alcohol annually. About a quarter of it is consumed as drinks. The rest is put to industrial use. We can put the entire amount for industrial purpose if we have prohibition.

Not only that, drinkers have four times as many accidents, absenteeism, and inefficiency as non-drinkers. In the USA, every year Rs 6,750 crore are lost - due to drink-induced mishaps. Therefore, the cost argument is no argument at all.

Fourth, it is asserted that prohibition is not practical, and that it has never been successfully implemented anywhere. This argument is of some merit. The most essential ingredient of successful implementation is that those enacting prohibition ought not to drink. So ministers, MPs, MLAs and the like should not only not drink but seen to be teetotallers.

Furthermore, there must be a social force which can make non-drinking a fashion and drinking out of date. That can only be the youth of the country. So the youth must be mobilized. Therein lies Morarjibhai's salvation. For others, let me warn that there are many Morarjis round the corner. There is no escape (hic!).