Teens hit the bottle as adults wear the blinder

DHNS

Bangalore, 21 February 2011: Shortly before the kick-off of a match between Manchester United and Manchester City on February 12, several groups of school-going children, not out of their teens yet, gathered at the upscale Manchester United Restaurant Bar here.

 

More streamed into the entry-with-fee only bar at Koramangala, sporting the English soccer club’s jersey and mingling with adults. As the match got off to a pulsating start, the teenagers, holding beer bottles, cheered their favourite United players.

 

Outside, the muscular men standing guard, and ensuring that every person, adult or minor, paid the Rs 200 entry fee, did not bother to check the kids’ IDs. With every daring move by the United players, the patrons roared.

 

Among the City’s many watering holes in not just Koramangala but in the central districts like Brigade Road and Church Street, teenagers are, increasingly, finding easy entry into bars and pubs. Random walk-ins to some of these bars, including Soul, on M G Road, revealed that most of them do not check for identity cards in a state where the permissible age of drinking is 21.

 

The permissible age was 18 till 1976. The legal age of drinking in public places in Delhi is 25 and 21 in other metro cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.

 

A little cautious

 

But even with its drinking age limit, some of Bangalore’s pubs, especially in the city-centre, allow even children with their school uniforms entry. The more luxurious places take to some caution, given the stakes, but the seedy bars and wine stores play happy-hosts to underage drinkers.

 

Manchester United Restaurant Bar Manager Ashwin Singh claimed that “as a matter of policy, IDs are checked before serving liquor to persons who we feel are below the permissible age”. But on February 12, oblivious of the potential consequences of illegal underage drinking, neither the bartenders nor the waiters at MU Restaurant and Bar shied away from serving alcohol to all and sundry.

 

Worried parents, like Jacintha Rassendren of Kamanahalli, a teacher and mother of a 15-year-old, and Sandhya Chittar of Malleswaram prefer “the authorities to act more stringently against errant” bars and pubs “that throw the law out of the window and encourage under-age drinking.”

 

The police and excise officials concede they cannot completely stop under-age drinking as they do not have the manpower to watch over the watering holes. “We understand there is a problem keeping tab of which is difficult. But policemen do go on surprise checks and book cases against the establishments who, instead of curbing under-age drinking, end up encouraging it by not checking IDs,” Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Suneel Kumar said.

 

Excise Minister M P Renukacharya, whose department is responsible for enforcing the law which makes it illegal to serve alcohol to those who have not attained the age of 21, said he also felt it was difficult to combat under-age drinking.

 

However, acknowledging teenage drinking was a “vice”,  Renukacharya said he would “call for an emergency meeting at the earliest and direct all my officers to strictly follow procedures and implement the rules” even if it  meant imposing tough measures, including hefty fines and imprisonment against adults serving liquor to under-age persons.

 

But with law enforcement officials’ strategy on what to do about under-age drinking in Bangalore still fuzzy, Renukacharya’s Excise department, which is chronically underfinanced and understaffed, may face hiccups in preventing under-age drinking.