Villo Naleo, Shalom Bible Seminary
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ver the past few weeks many have opined to pen down their views on the issue of NLTP Act. Much as I agree with many people who are for “Regulation” on the side of lifting the ban from a modern perspective; nevertheless, I’d rather stay traditionally awkward with “Prohibition” for these following reasons:
First on Regulation; the ideals of Regulation are modern and professional, and it requires individual as well as collective effort to put it into effective practice. Talking about other regulations mandated in our land, it would be worth considering the NERC as an example; the Nagaland Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) was enforced in 2003, but there is still enormous power thefts happening in and around Dimapur town itself. The question of integrity does not apply anymore; with no other choice left, the department was forced to tackle power theft by monitoring manually (in the form of providing two wheelers). This is one awful example of many regulations that are implemented in Nagaland. For this kind of ineffective regulatory, I do not see any good prospect out of Liquor Regulation in Nagaland.Secondly, regulating liquor trade in Nagaland would not prevent alcohol abuse. The very fact of regulating a legal age (25) for drinking itself would be a disaster. How can one say, I will start drinking after reaching 25. For sure young people under 25 are considered minors, but when it comes to drinking they are not minors. Indeed young people at 17-25 are the most vulnerable ones to adopt addictive habits.
Thirdly, there are opinions terming Prohibition as dreaming and Regulation as achieving, but it is gibberish; Regulating liquor trade also anticipates for co-operation, integrity, competency, infrastructures, resources, efficiency, and professionalism, but all these seemingly ideals is a far away dream too. On the other hand Prohibition looks back into the past, the realities of the family struggle today, and cautions us in repeating possible mistake tomorrow. When NLTP was enforced in 1989, there was massive abuse of drinking alcohol in Kohima and Dimapur, leading to street riots, crimes under the influence of alcohol, narrow escapes from terrible accidents, homicides, thefts and many more. Imagine tomorrow with higher rate of population, traffic congestion and multi-ethnicity groupings, the rate of vices in Nagaland could be much higher in scale.
Lastly, I argue for prohibition from an ethical perspective so there will surely be lapses from economical perspective. Obviously there is some amount of state’s revenue at loss, but if regulation of Liquor is solely aiming for boosting the state’s revenue it is a disguised factual claim; there are no brewery, no factory, very less cultivable lands for wine growing plants etc. The ineffectiveness of NLTP should not be looked upon as the failure of the government; it is a corporate failure and we need to accept that. And that does not give us any reason to revoke the law. Nagaland as a Christian state should continue to spearhead Christian ethics in the national and international level. There is no point of comparing ourselves with the other states in India, we know what works best in our land and that is prohibition. I do not undermine our society, but we have not reached the level of regulating liquor trade that would profit our people. For sure Liquor prohibition is not the final act of transforming Nagaland but it is one very important step towards it.
