Such traumatic scenes may soon get enacted at every bhadralok doorstep if the state government has its way. The excise department has engaged over 200 government employees to gather data on the drinking habits of citizens.

No, it's not a `Big Brother is watching you' survey. The data will be used to estimate how much liquor is consumed across the state. This figure, in turn, will used to find out if liquor makers are evading excise duty. Sources say the survey will be completed in urban areas in two months.

Why such a novel survey? It's part of finance minister Asim Dasgupta's battleplan to plug the gaps and ramp up revenue. After taking charge of the excise department, he was surprised to find that though the number of tipplers in the state had risen steadily, excise collections hadn't.

"The exercise is aimed at finding out how much liquor is consumed and how much revenue is collected. We know distilleries often pass off fully loaded tankers as half-full. We have to identify these loopholes."

Dasgupta has set a Rs 1,000-crore target as excise earnings from liquor sales for 2007-08. An expert committee has been set up to suggest ways to plug leaks in the revenue cauldron. But he made it clear that liquor licences wouldn't be allotted blindly. Over the past few years, the process of issuing licences to retail outlets has been eased after the excise department realised it was losing a lot of money to bootlegging.