In the last 27 year I was first time out of Rajasthan and Delhi on both independence and republic day. Luckily on both days I was out of my college also to visit some beautiful places in the country Mahe and Goa. I was surprised to see the apathy towards the law of dry day; liquor selling prohibition in retail shop. Though there is no ban on consumption on the dry day. Liquor policy is a state policy and central government can't direct a state to implement liquor prohibition policy. Every state has its own liquor prohibition policy. It's in state's jurisdiction to declare a day as dry day.
Check out the list of dry day of different states:
Maharashtra:
http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/mahastateexcise.maharashtra.gov.in/STATE%20EXCISE/EXCISE/list_of__dry_days.htm
Rajasthan:
http://www.rajexcise.org/web/info.htm
Delhi:
http://excise.delhigovt.nic.in/ex7.asp
Himachal Pradesh:
http://hptax.nic.in/stex678.htm
Mostly state has declared three national holidays namely Independence day, Republic day and Gandhi Jayanti along with some religious festival day. Here my concern is towards National holiday. I might be biased towards liquor ban as I don't consume. But still I wanted to share my feeling on this topic.
Unlike USA, we have our own way to celebrate these national festivals. But how many of us celebrate these days as for common man, it's just another day where school children get some kind of sweets, national flag is unfurled followed by national anthem and some speeches by leaders and celebration is over. So what is so important being a festival where majority of population doesn't participate. These festivals are of national importance which unites each and every Indian irrespective of his/her religious, regional and caste background. In this backdrop, every Indian feels proud about national festivals.
For many people, celebration without alcohol is useless. On this 26th Jan, everybody got three day continuous leave, thanks to weekend and Republic day. Many fun loving people like me flocked to Goa. Goa without alcohol is not true Goa in his spirit. I don't know whether Goa has dry day on Republic day. But I was surprised to see the flow of alcohol on Republic day because so far I have seen complete ban on sell of liquor on dry day. A ban on sell of liquor and not on consumption is contrary to me.
A mere law will not serve its purpose until people start to avoid liquor on dry days. But whether people will like to avoid will be a question. Government should check this law whether it's serving its true purpose which is giving respect to nation builder and freedom fighter. If dry day law is not serving the same than it will be good to abolish this law and let people to decide on celebration.
