Moreover, if one cannot go even 24 hours without full and free access to alcohol, there is no need to panic because actually the vends only appear to be closed. Every year on October 2, Chandigarh Newsline sends out reporters to buy a few bottles as a demonstration of how the law is openly flaunted. It is true that Gandhi wanted people to lead sober and healthy lives, free from all addictions, but Gandhi was not so foolish as to believe that people could be turned to healthier lives by merely passing a law prohibiting production, sale and consumption of alcohol. In Western countries, the variety of alcoholic beverages is enormous and there a tradition of drinking also. Yet one reads that in recent years, Western countries have seen a distinct trend away from alcohol, not because of any prohibitory law but because people are more aware of the deleterious consequences of drinking.

The once-a-year 24 hours of prohibition in the name of Gandhi does nothing to make alcohol less attractive to drinkers, it does not solve a single problem related to alcohol. Nothing is gained from this annual ritual; to the contrary, something is very definitely lost: and that is respect for the law in general. It is an axiom as old as Aristotle that howsoever good a law may be, if it is not obeyed it does not constitute good government.

Of course, the Gandhi Jayanti dry day law is not the only disregarded law in this country but it is certainly typical of both the popular attitude to the law and the government's habitual resort to meaningless paper exercises. If a law cannot be enforced, it would be better to do away with it rather than see both the law and the legislature that passed shrugged aside.

Worse yet, whatever is banned tends to become glamorous and attractive, so from this angle also the farce of closing the vends on Gandhi Jayanti is counter-productive.

Legalising business-as-usual at the vends on Gandhi Jayanti need not mean that we turn away from Gandhi's idea of an addiction-free life. If there is a serious desire to advance this ideal then obviously a sustained campaign to change the way people think and live is the way to do it. Drawn from medical research, traffic accident statistics and sociological research, the arguments against use of alcohol are strong indeed. As Gandhi knew very well, in the matter of human behaviour, understanding is always superior to law: law cannot succeed until people understand the ill-consequences of what they are doing and turn away.