There was a time when travellers along National Highway 1, running through Punjab, were wooed by innumerable signs that promised “Chilled Beer Available”. In 2014, all this joy dried up following a judgment by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The liquor vends, or thekas as they’re fondly referred to, were shut down. Officially, that is. Those in the know claim thekas continued their business, only without advertising. Simarpreet Singh said of his regular theka in Khanna town, “Most of us who come here are either locals [from Khanna] or labourers from nearby places. Very few long route travellers stop here.”

Without the 2014 judgement, the thekas were now on the wrong side of legal, which meant no advertising and no chance of attracting the highway customer. On March 28 of this year, this changed. The Punjab government amended the Punjab excise (amendment) Act 2016 by passing a bill in the State Assembly. The Punjab Government inserted section 26-A to the existing Act, which says liquor vends that fall within the municipal limits of towns with population exceeding 20,000 are exempted from the restrictions that were applicable earlier. Following this, thekas along national highways, which had been locked up for two years, can now set up shop again.

Without the over-the-top advertising, it isn’t as easy to differentiate a theka from a regular shop nowadays. But if one slows down just a bit – as a traveller hankering for a drink might – you can just about make out the glint of the bottles from behind the counter. Or if you’re too impatient to cruise around looking for a theka, you could simply ask a cop on duty who’ll gladly point you to one adjacent to a flyover – even if it’s the middle of the day, no questions asked. The thekas are legal, after all and Punjab police has bigger fish to fry than curbing drunk driving.

Harman Singh Sidhu, President of Chandigarh-based NGO ArriveSAFE, which has been at the forefront of the legal battle to ban thekas on highways, called the government’s justification for this new move “weird”. “They’re saying that these liquor vends were operating without any permission,” said Sidhu. “So now they’ve legalized them and they’re back on the highway.”

According to Sidhu, the new bill will lead to large stretches of national highways having thekas. ”They’ve divided the national highway into two parts – one is the countryside, the other the urban and semi-urban areas,” he said. “But if you travel from point A to B, out of 100 kilometers, 60 kilometers will fall in the limit of some municipal body or Army cantonment.”

Sidhu also questioned the legality of the bill, alleging that by passing it the government had “completely bypassed the High Court order”.

On the other side of the highway though, there is reason to celebrate. Manmohan Singh, owner of a theka on the outskirts of Khanna in Ludhiana district, is overjoyed that the government has passed the new bill. “Hum to bohot khush hain,” he said. “We are very happy. Customers are coming. They [the government] have done a good job.”

The ahaata (drinking place) next to Singh’s theka seems to be thriving. He has 5-6 customers at noon on a weekday in various stages of intoxication. And along with the drinks, snacks and food are also readily available – pakodas on the fry, chicken in the tandoor. The Government’s “good job” has allowed Manmohan Singh to make money off Punjab’s two biggest appetites – eating and drinking.

Harpinder Pal Singh owns a theka in Nakodar in Jalandhar district. Like Manmohan, he also approves of the Government’s decision. “All the thekas on the highway had been shut down earlier and our sales went down. But now, sales are increasing,” he said. According to him, “sales went down by 25%” after the ban.

Despite his restored fortunes, Singh is sympathetic to Sidhu’s cause. “I totally agree with Mr. Sidhu’s thinking,” he said. “But if the government wants to move the thekas away from the highways, they should demand revenue from us accordingly. Our sales go down and the government is asking for more revenue.”

Claims of the government squeezing theka owners for more and more revenue are not without merit. The revenue targets for Punjab’s Excise Policy in 2013-14 was Rs 4,020 crore and the next year, it was Rs 4,680 crore. In 2015-16, it’s jumped to Rs 5,040 crore. Between March 2014 to March 2016, when the ban on thekas was in place, the Government’s upped its excise revenue collection by more than Rs 1,000 crore. With sales dipping due to the ban, the margins of theka owners took a beating. As one theka owner, who requested to not be named, put it: “Sidhu ji aur Sarkaar ke beech mein hum log phas jaate hain.” (“Between Sidhuji and the government, we’re the ones who get trapped.”)

The ones doing the drinking, however, appear to be unaffected by and large. Or as theka owner Manmohan Singh, put it: “Jisne peeni hai, woh to highway ke peeche se bhi le ayega.” (“If somebody wants to drink, he’ll just go round the long way, off the highway.”)

Sidhu, however, is used to this line of attack and offered an elegant rebuttal. “Well, if they [theka owners] say that the customers will come anyway, jisne peeni hai woh pee hi lega, why do they want to stick to the highways? Why can’t they go inside?” he asked. It’s true that there is a contradiction in the theka owners’ claims. If the ban is indeed pointless, then it shouldn’t have led to lower earnings technically. Also, now that the thekas are back on the highway, where are the extra sales coming from?

Sidhu is convinced that having thekas on the highway effectively drives people to drink. “The people who are on the roads, they are tempted and they buy [alcohol],” he said. Unfortunately for Sidhu, there isn’t sufficient data to definitively prove his point. Whatever little data is available doesn’t indicate that the ban lowered the number of deaths.

In response to a question raised by Mr. Ajaib Singh Bhatti (Congress MLA) in September 2015, deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal Badal released figures related to deaths from road accidents between 2013-15. In the first year of the ban (between 2014 and 2015), the number actually rose by 221 deaths to 3,538.

Sidhu’s argument is that “probably this is too short a period to say that the ban is not really working”.  Still, he has been heavily involved in setting up a website – punjabroadsafety.org  – which, in theory at least, logs basic data about every road accident: age group of the driver, type of road, type of vehicle etc. However, he complained that the website is not being updated as it should be despite claims of daily updates.

As per the site, there were ten fatal accidents in Punjab over the last 90 days. That number is suspiciously low, given that this report from 2015 estimates that an average of nine people die every day on Punjab’s roads. According to Sidhu, the daily average is even higher at around 13. Whatever rudimentary data is available also doesn’t tell us how many deaths are related to drunk driving.

The deficiency of quality data indicates the low priority the State gives this issue. Ever-increasing revenue targets and the clout of vested interests have led to the Government to remain apathetic to the problem. As Sidhu puts it, “This shows that we are not at all interested in analysing the problem. Solving it is the second stage.”