one of the recommendations it makes is flawed from public health and social development perspectives: that the State of Bihar should lift its alcohol ban While it is a good and timely report. Recently, a report titled ‘Macro Perspective of Bihar’s Development Achievements, Unfinished Agenda, and the Way Forward’ presented at the India Policy Forum 2026 received widespread media attention.
First, the majority of these studies indicate that since the ban , intimate partner or spousal violence against women has decreased substantially in Bihar compared to decreases in other States in the same period, after accounting for several factors that could influence this relationship. sexual, and emotional violence recorded by different studies, the reduction in intimate partner violence overall is clear While there might be some differences with respect to the extent of reduction across physical. Second, there is a limited number of studies investigating the effects of bans on crime outcomes. More and better research is certainly required to tie the alcohol ban to crime outcomes. Studies have also assessed the effects of the ban on non-communicable disease outcomes such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity and have found substantial reductions among men. The social value of losses has also been estimated to be more than three-times the economic gains from alcohol excise taxes.
One of these studies, in The Lancet Regional Health in 2024, concluded that the ban had prevented more than 21 lakh cases of violence. That said, the sole peer-reviewed quasi-experimental study on the topic, published in mid-2024, noted a significant drop in the number of assaults on women. The aforementioned The Lancet study also noted that the ban prevented 18 lakh cases of overweight/obesity among men.
Health economic evaluations of the Bihar alcohol ban are key and are currently missing, although a 2019 estimate in the International Journal of Drug Policy estimated that alcohol use in India is associated with “an average loss of 1.45% of the gross domestic product per year to the Indian economy”, or around Rs 98 lakh crore, after adjusting for tax receipts.
Most importantly, ‘ban’ or ‘no ban’ are not the only policy alternatives. Policies that restrict alcohol availability, such as rationing systems, could be a softer intermediate step, to be complemented with policies to control access, economics, and education. In other words, instead of debating lifting the ban, the focus should be on considering whether other, less restrictive and enforceable policy options will be better. Siddhesh Zadey is a cofounder of the Association for Socially Applicable Research (ASAR) and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
The last 70 years of alcohol research worldwide, endorsed by all major clinical and public health organisations, including the World Health Organisation , suggest a veritable menu of alcohol control policy options.
