HI(ck) Kerala!!! Dry Kerala!!! Sigh Kerala!!! Bye Kerala!!!! No country for men!!!

The God's own country - Kerala is all set to become a country of only Gods. With the ruling Government trying it's might in making the state a dry state; a vacation in Kerala may never be the same again. 

The state has the highest per capita consumption of 8 liters per person per annum. Punjab stands second. 

With the ruling party coming down firmly on the alcohol menace, the Government initiated sweeping regulations to cancel the licenses of the bars across the state. Now the bar owners have approached the Court and the court has temporarily stopped the Government from acting in this regard. 

"If you want to go dry, follow the Gujarat model", stated the bench. Let us see some of the ramifications of the planned prohibition and its aftermath. 

The most obvious and the first casualty would be Tourism. The raison d'etre for the state's turn of fortunes in the last 2 decades. The neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu, GOa and the neighbouring country Sri Lanka are both vying for the pie of disgruntled tourists. 

In Tamil Nadu, Chief Minister J Jayalalitha has announced the launch of Amma' s Toddy, priced at just INR 1. As a part of the greater Brand Amma scheme - a Toddy bottle + rice + fish curry would cost only INR 10. 

To aid international tourists, a weekly pass is being provisioned for just US $1. 

Similar plans are being planned by Goa. Sri Lankan has reserved its plans for now from being made public. 

The Congress Party is in a dilemma now. One of the key areas of Direct Cash Transfer beneficiaries were to be the people who queue up each morning for their daily fix of toddy. Now, this prohibition may dent the party's ambitious plans. 

The other fallout has been the large scale systemic destruction of the toddy plantations. Farmers in frustration have decided to cut the palm trees. This is being seen to lead to a major deforestation danger!!!

Huge amounts of banana chips are lying unsold. The opposition is crying foul. There have been jibes in the media that Kerala has now turned into a Banana state!!! The opposition is blaming the Leading party for this fiasco. 

The Government is being blamed for not heeding to the Court statement. The Government has defended itself for not implementing the Gujarat model. The following were the reasons that were presented in the court:-

• A complete parallel market and logistics has to be set up for manufacturing and distributing alcohol illegally. 
• That the brewers in Kerala were not skilled enough in creating spurious alcohol. The Government accepted blame on this front. Manufacturing. The Government has accepted a proposal from the Gujarat Government for an education tour to resolve this shortcoming. 
• Since legal alcohol will be available only in 5 star hotels, the state will have to construct new 5 star hotels as they are far and few in number today. This will entail expense. 
• A complete kickback and bribe structure will need to be created to ensure that the money earned in the alcohol business is distributed across the chains. Again, a separate team will be visiting Gujarat and learn how this is operational there.

"Lastly, Punjab will finally get an opportunity it had been waiting for years!!! With competition out of the way, it will proudly advertise itself as the liquor capital of India. This will have a psychological effect on each and every proud Keralite. Can the courts address this identity loss for each Keralite?", filed statement by a battery of lawyers representing bar owners.