Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) holds a Lecture cum Debate on Prohibition: Pros & Cons

On Feb 13, AMA held a lecture cum debate on "Prohibition: Pros and Cons". Mr. Rajiv Vastupal, president of AMA, later told me that he had no intention to have all four speakers to be anti-prohibition and had selected the speakers based on some of them having taken a pro-prohibition stand earlier, but that person changed over to anti-prohibition later after studying all the issues and data available. All the four speakers:

1. Mr. Sunil Parekh, Management Expert & former Sr. Director of CII
2. Mr Vidyut Joshi, Academician, Centre for Social Studies, South Gujarat University
3. Mr. MB Athreya, eminent Management Philosopher
4. Mr. Piyush Desai, Chairman, Wagh Bakri Group

were against prohibition and each speaker presented a very balanced argument for and against prohibition, concluding their speech with the message, as Mr. Athreya put it "the ills of alcoholism affect only a small portion of the state, but the ills of prohibition are far greater and affect the whole state".

Mr. Sunil Parekh and Mr. Athreya both had a powerpoint presentation. I am attaching Mr. Parekh's presentation and will be attaching Mr. Athreya's presentation and the video covering of the speeches in a couple of days.