Booze Money: Telengana Settles On Liquor To Fund Its Farmer Welfare Schemes

Higher liquor prices, along with higher fuel prices and increased tax collections have brought major relief to the Telangana government’s finances, which were reeling severely under the impact of the outgo on farmers’ schemes, reports Hans India.

The two schemes, Rythu Bandhu and the Farmers Insurance Scheme, had burdened the state exchequer by Rs 14,000 crore. Officials said that increased beer prices as well higher fuel prices helped fill the coffers. The total revenue generated from liquor sales was Rs 1,938 crore as against Rs 1,524 crore earned in May last year. More than Rs 400 crore was generated from beer sales alone.

A senior official of state’s Commercial Taxes department was quoted as saying that the growth in revenues from liquor sales is phenomenal in May this year, and that the government expects the same trend to continue in the coming months also.

A story that appeared in Firstpost in July last year, had shown the increasing reliance of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on “booze money” to generate revenue – in total disregard to their stand on prohibition in the earlier years. How to fund populist welfare schemes was an issue, and liquor provided easy answers.

A minister had in fact, hailed beer as a “health drink”, the article was quoted as saying. The excise minister had gone so far as to defend the government decision to promote more distilleries saying, “We have to spend over Rs 50,000 crore on irrigation; where do we get the resources?”

The government is reportedly pulling out all stops to increase alcohol consumption, by increasing sale hours, by increasing the number of bars and outlets, and so on. Activists are said to be upset over this desire of the state for liquor income.