Indian Alcohol Atlas

“The increasing production, distribution, promotion and easy availability of alcohol poses a great challenge” claimed Dr Anbumani Ramadoss the Indian Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare when launching the Indian Alcohol Policy Alliances’ ‘AlcoholAtlas of India’ in April at New Delhi. Dr Ramadoss went on to confirm the Indian Government’s commitment to formulating an All-Indian Alcohol Policy in consultation with State governments and recognised the difficulty of the task.
Indian Alcohol Policy Alliance website www.indianalcoholpolicy.org

Dr SArul Rhaj (Chairman, IAPA and President, Commonwealth Medical Association) thanked and congratulated his colleagues in IAPA for producing the Alcohol Atlas and for the Government’s commitment to alcohol policy and health improvement.

The Alcohol Atlas has been produced to be a helpful guide for policy makers, professionals, national and international organizations and institutions who are engaged on alcohol issues. The Atlas is divided into four sections: tracing the history of alcohol from times ancient to the present age; discussing the current patterns and trends of alcohol use; detailing the burden and socio-economic impact of alcohol; and providing a quick overview of various policy trends and intervention strategies to reduce alcohol related harm throughout the world.

A full version of theAlcoholAtlas of India can be found on The Indian Alcohol Policy Alliance (IAPA) web site www.indianalcoholpolicy.org/alcohol_atlas.html

Dr Vijay Chandra ,WHO Regional Advisor on Mental Health for South-East Asia, encouraged the adoption of alcohol policy at local and community level saying that every family in India should formulate its own approach to controlling alcohol use so as to prevent the spread of alcohol-related harm.

Swami Agnivesh, (Veteran Social Activist and Chairman, Bandhua Mukti Morcha) called for a return to first principles and called for a popular movement to be inaugurated to protect the poor and vulnerable across the whole of India and particularly in rural India.

Derek Rutherford,Chairman of GAPA, called on India to heed the warnings inherent in allowing the drinks industry to operate without adequate control. Appropriate control policies were required if India was not to suffer the extent of alcohol-related social and health harm experienced in Europe. The economic cost attributable to alcohol harm is estimated to be €270bn and 9 million children live in families where alcohol is a problem. The formation of national alcohol policies need to be free from influence of the drinks industry and their involvement should be confined to the implementation of evidence-based strategies.

Production ofAlcohol in India
India is generally regarded as a traditional ‘dry’ or ‘abstaining’ culture (Bennet et al, 1993). Yet, it has one of the largest alcohol beverage industries in the world. The UB Group, for example is the third largest spirits producer in the world after Diageo and Pernod Ricard (ICAP, 2006c). India is the dominant producer of alcohol in the South-EastAsia region (65 per cent) and contributes to about 7% of the total alcohol beverage imports into the region.More than two thirds of the total beverage alcohol consumption within the region is in India (Table 2.4).

There has been a steady increase in the production of alcohol in the country, with the production doubling from 887.2 million litres in 1992-93 to 1,654 million litres in 1999-2000 and was expected to almost treble to 2300 million litres (estimated) by 2006-07 (The Planning Commission of India, 2003).

This trend in alcohol trade and consumption is in marked contrast to the warnings of Mahatma Gandhi who, as one of the strongest proponents of alcohol abstinence said that “… one of the most greatly felt evils of the British Rule is the importation of alcohol that enemy of mankind, the curse of civilization in some form or another.The measure of the evil wrought by this borrowed habit will be properly gauged by the reader when he is told that the enemy has spread throughout the length and breadth of India, in spite of religious prohibition; for even the touch of a bottle containing alcohol pollutes the Mohammedan, according to his religion, and the religion of the Hindu strictly prohibits the use of alcohol in any form whatever, and yet alas! the government it seems, instead of stopping, are aiding and abetting the spread of alcohol. The poor here, as everywhere are the greatest sufferers. It is they who spend what little they earn in buying alcohol instead of buying good food and other necessaries. It is the wretched poor man who has to starve his family, and he thereby break the sacred trust of looking after his children, if any, in order to drink himself into misery and premature death”.

Article 47, Directive Principles on the Constitution of India declares that “The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health”.

In the third section of the Atlas on the Health, Social and Economic Impact reference is made to the “new wave of marketing that quotes evidence showing that regular light drinkers, over 45 years of age – without any heavy drinking episodes, could have a lower risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) at the individual level. This cannot be applied in isolation because not only are daily light drinkers rare in developing countries, there are many nutrition and health related problems that get exacerbated by alcohol consumption.

“The available evidence and research papers documenting these findings clearly state that daily alcohol use is not, and. cannot be, recommended as a public health strategy for mcoronary heart disease (CHD) protection.

“For most countries, the net effect of alcohol on coronary heart disease (CHD) is negative (Room, 2005) particularly in areas of lower mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD), such as developing countries (Murray, 1996).”

Referring to Burden and Socio-economic Impact of Alcohol: The Bangalore Study (Dr.Gururaj, Girish and Dr Benegal, Vivek), 2006, the Atlas outlines the association between alcohol and injuries, mental health impact, direct, indirect and intangible health costs, domestic violence and drink driving. The economic impact is summarised in table 3.15.