From today's Economic Times Mubai edition front page: A JOKE in Kerala paying tribute to the drinking competencies of Malayalis is that in most towns the only one who can stand without a wobble after 6 pm is the local Gandhi statue. Keeping to that tradition, Keralites have just completed a ‘fizzcal’ year, in terms of contribution to the state exchequer, from drinking. 

It would be unusual for any government anywhere in the world to have tax revenue from liquor as its key source of income, but glass-clinking Keralites have managed that, with sales taxes from liquor overtaking tax earnings from petroleum sales for the first time, in 2009-10. 

In other words, sales tax collection from petrol, diesel, ATF and kerosene, which contributed 2,903 crore in 2009-10, has been eclipsed by tax revenues from brandy, whisky, wine, gin, rum and other assorted spirits that brought in 3,000.2 crore. 

For a perspective of the state’s overall sales tax revenues, taxes on liquor and petroleum now contribute roughly 55%. Another statistic can be more numbing than a quick doublelarge peg that many drinkers prefer when in a hurry: While turnover of the Kerala State Beverages Corporation, or KSBC, over a 22-year period from its inception in 1984 to 2005-06, was 18,100 crore, the earnings in the past four years and four months were a whopping 19,075 crore.  

Keralites’ drinking pattern surprises President Patil
CONTRIBUTION to the exchequer in the first 22 years was 13,722 crore, while in the past four years and four months, the gross contribution to the coffers tallied 14,922 crore, said N Shanker Reddy, managing director, KSBC. And, all of this despite the state’s influential Catholic Church constantly decrying the easy availability of liquor, and even an expression of dismay by President Pratibha Patil about the drinking pattern of Keralites, when she visited the state last year.