Futures Beyond Prohibition

Imagine if prohibition didn’t come from a ‘Cabinet meeting’ but from a community meeting under a banyan tree. What if the decision to sell or restrict alcohol was made not by an excise commissioner, but by a women’s collective, or a panchayat that actually understood the rhythms of its people?

In some parts of our country, this happens informally; village councils in Chhattisgarh or Odisha declaring themselves ‘dry’ not by government order, but by shared will. Often with the intent to reduce poverty or domestic violence linked to alcohol abuse. This is an assertion of community decision-making powers regarding local welfare. Upholding cultural and traditional norms, particularly in tribal communities. 

Of course, these local bans are fragile. They depend on unity, and unity is hard to legislate. But perhaps the real shift begins when prohibition turns participatory, and there in lies our cue, when it’s not a punishment from above but a choice from below.

In such a world, women’s groups might lead the decision-making, as they already do in anti-liquor movements across Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The moral authority would shift from the bureaucrat to the collective. The enforcement would be social, not carceral. And truth be told, it wouldn’t solve everything, but it might make the law more human. Which trust me, is a long step forward.

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What if sobriety, or moderation, became a cultural celebration instead? Imagine a calendar of festivals redesigned around abstinence; days that honour restraint, balance, and wellbeing. Instead of guilt, there’s pride. Instead of shame; ceremony.

In many parts, alcohol and abstinence have both coexisted as parallel moral economies. The same society that sanctified Soma and Mahua in ritual also venerated the ascetic who renounced them. In Bihar’s Mithila region (where I am from), women still sing songs during chhath puja that equate purity with abstinence, not out of moral fear, but out of spiritual clarity.

What if we could build on that? What if sobriety was reimagined as a festival of balance rather than denial? Picture a new kind of calendar. No-Drink Ceremonies where abstaining was not about guilt but about collective renewal.

Culturally, we know how to make fasting joyous. We’ve done it for food, for silence, for penance. Why not for the bottle?

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Let’s imagine a future where alcohol isn’t banned, but smartly moderated.

Every bottle has a digital excise stamp, trackable via QR code. Purchase limits are linked to one’s ID. Local dashboards display consumption data in real-time—open to the public, not just to officials.

It sounds like science fiction, but versions of this already exist in pilot projects in Telangana, where the government uses GPS-tagged trucks to track liquor movement and detect diversion. Take that idea further; imagine using similar tools not to catch smugglers, but to shape public policy, identifying addiction hotspots and targeting intervention programs before crises erupt.

The danger, of course, is government surveillance. But technology doesn’t have to mean policing. Used wisely, it can make alcohol management more transparent, data-driven, and humane.

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What if we imagine the transition at the scale of three decades?

The Department of Future Generations (one of my earlier speculative ministries) could take charge. The goal wouldn’t be to erase alcohol, but to gently dislodge it from everyday life, through early education, public health programs, and urban design that encourages socialisation without intoxication.

Imagine a future where “social drinking” doesn’t automatically mean drinking. Where youth bars serve botanical elixirs. Where abstinence isn’t moral superiority, it’s just another preference.

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Alcohol consumption doesn’t vanish overnight; it ebbs, gradually, as habits and generations change. When people begin to drink less, the impact is material. Truck drivers, small brewers, bar staff, and vendors that depend on the bottle’s circulation need to transition. So as that demand softens, we will need to imagine what replaces it.

Perhaps the answer lies in a ‘Slow Transition Fund’, a national effort to help communities reshape their livelihoods around new kinds of pleasure and production. A truck driver who once ferried crates of liquor might transport local farm produce; a toddy tapper could learn to make fermented tonics, herbal bitters, or non-alcoholic brews that still honour his craft.

Across the country, these small transitions are already taking root. In Goa, craft breweries are experimenting with fermented teas and botanical sodas. In Jharkhand, Mahua, long treated as illicit, is being reimagined as a cultural heritage spirit and exported responsibly. Together, they hint at what a post-intoxication economy could look like: one that keeps the art of fermentation alive, but decouples it from dependence.

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