[ad_1]
NEW DELHI: Police waved the batons on Monday to beat thirsty Indians struggling to buy alcohol for the first time in 40 days as the government further eased the world’s largest coronavirus blockade.
Some state leaders had lobbied for liquor stores to reopen earlier, saying money from alcohol sales was a major source of tax revenue.
The Delhi government said on Monday night that it would impose a 70% “special crown rate” on liquor sales starting Tuesday to increase revenue affected by the pandemic, local media reported.
The government attributes its strict closure of almost all activities since the end of March by keeping the official Covid-19 case count at 42,500 relatively modest, with around 1,400 deaths, this in a country with a population of 1.3 billion people.
But the blockade also resulted in misery for millions of workers in India’s vast informal sector, which suddenly lost its job and dealt a major blow to Asia’s third-largest economy.
In addition to some relaxations allowed for industry and agriculture last month, offices were allowed on Monday to operate with a third of capacity.
Certain stores were allowed to open, and some cars and motorcycles were allowed on the roads.
Officials had painstakingly drawn chalk circles for customers to drink, but social distancing efforts were thwarted when people gathered from early morning.
“We have been in solitude for more than a month,” Asit Banerjee, 55, told AFP while queuing in Kolkata.
“Alcohol will energize us to maintain social detachment during the pandemic,” he said.
Police generously placed “lathi” sticks – long-hardened bamboo sticks – in Delhi and other cities to control the crowds.
In places like Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh state, the shops were closed by police shortly after they opened as long lines of men in face masks meandered around the block.
“One of the stores had opened in the morning, but fighting broke out as many people had gathered,” a police officer in Ghaziabad told AFP.
But hundreds continue to hang around the streets and neighboring neighborhoods in hopes that the liquor stores will reopen.
“It’s not like I have something to do at home,” Deepak Kumar, 30, told AFP as he patiently waited across the street from a point of sale in the national capital, New Delhi.
A lucky customer, a 25-year-old man named Sagar, said he went to a liquor store in Delhi at 7:30 a.m. and was delighted to discover that it had opened early.
“There were about 20 to 25 people in the morning and the store was open for about two hours,” he told AFP.
“People were allowed to enter in rows of five. Now they have closed it.”
However, Sagar managed to buy some wine.
In some states, including Maharashtra, certain liquor stores remained closed amid confusion over which stores they could open.
And in other states, like Assam, they opened several days before.
Although illegal in some states like the teetotaler Prime Minister Narendra Modi Gujarat, alcohol consumption has increased sharply in recent years as the country’s middle class has grown.
This is particularly true of spirits with Indians who reportedly consume almost half of the world’s whiskey, although much of it was actually rum, according to purists.
