India's women go to war against alcohol abuse
Shaikh Azizur Rahman, Foreign Correspondent
* Last Updated: December 31. 2009 2:11PM UAE / December 31. 2009 10:11AM GMT
Roshni Devi and her alcohol resistance group with Brijesh Kumar, a
former drinker and wife beater. Shaikh Azizur Rahman
KOTHAL KHURD // Brijesh Kumar used to spend half of his daily wage
each night on alcohol. When his wife asked for money for food and
household expenses, he beat her.
Unable to bear the abuse, Munni Devi would stay away from her house
for hours in the evening until her husband fell asleep. This routine
continued for more than two decades.
"But four years ago, when Roshni Devi organised the women in action
against our village's drunkards, my husband was forced to stop taking
alcohol," said Ms Devi, a 40-year-old resident of Kothal Khurd village
in Haryana's Mahendragarh district.
"I had never dreamt that any power could correct my husband and peace
could ever return to my family."
She was referring to Roshni Devi, the village chief who led a
successful anti-alcohol campaign. In July, India's president, Pratibha
Patil, invited Roshni Devi, a Dalit, or low caste, Hindu woman to her
residence in Delhi and said that her movement's achievement proved
that the "most difficult of challenges in society can be overcome with
courage, dedication and confidence".
In most of Haryana's villages many day labourers are alcoholics who
squander most of their earnings on drink, leaving their wives,
children and families to fend for themselves, according to the
anti-alcohol campaigners.
In Kothal Khurd, about 20 per cent of the village's 415 Hindu families
are headed by Dalit men who work as day labourers on farms, and almost
one quarter of them were alcoholics just a few years ago, according to
Mr Kumar, who has turned to helping campaign against drink. "At least
one third of the men in our [Dalit] community took alcohol every day,
in the evening. As it happened in my case, the families suffered badly
in all terms and many incurred bad debts. With men spending more than
half of their wage on alcohol bottles, little money would be left for
their families and the situation forced the women to go to work and
children to drop out of the schools," Mr Kumar said. "Alcohol was
sending all of us on the path to ruin."
But the situation began changing in Kothal Khurd in 2005 when Roshni
Devi took a vow to eradicate alcoholism from her village and organised
the women to fight off the menace.
Ms Devi, the only Dalit university graduate from the village and a
mother of two sons, listened to the women speak of their sufferings
and told them that they could help their husbands shun alcohol if they
collectively stood up to them.
Hoping to add more political muscle to her movement, in 2005 Ms Devi
contested the local Panchayat, or village administration, elections
for the seat of sarpanch, or head of the administration, newly
reserved for a Dalit candidate. Because of her fight against
alcoholism, she was so popular among women and non-drinking men that
she polled more votes than all nine of her Dalit male opponents
combined.
However, Ms Devi's election did not go down well with everyone in the
Hindu-majority village. "On the first day as I held my office as the
sarpanch, some upper-caste men said they could not accept the
authority of a woman in the village. When I said that I would do my
best to empower the women and strengthen the movement against
alcoholism, a drunken man pulled me out of my office in the presence
of other men," Ms Devi said.
"But by trying to humiliate me that way, in fact they emboldened me
further on my key mission against alcohol."
Ms Devi was soon able to help enact a resolution seeking the closure
of the liquor shops within 1km of the village. This led to three such
stores being shut down.
But because some Kothal Khurd men still managed to obtain liquor at
far-off shops and return home drunk, Ms Devi's group formed teams made
up of Dalit as well as upper-caste women to confront the drunkards in
the village.
"We caught many drunken men and abused them publicly for taking
alcohol despite our repeated appeals to stay away from drinking. In
some cases we even assaulted some men who tried to abuse us," said Ram
Kali Devi, wife of a day wage labourer who was forced to quit his
10-year drinking habit in 2005 after Roshni Devi launched her
movement.
"Soon, as a number of alcohol users began dwindling in our village, we
knew that our action was working," she said. "All families in Kothal
Khurd are in peace because alcohol is not a hurdle on its development
any more."
In other Indian states alcoholism is also often blamed for domestic
violence and poverty. Sometimes women, mostly wives of alcoholics,
have formed groups that have forced alcohol shops to close.
However, according to Shivtaj Singh, a local social activist and
professor at the government college in the nearby town of Narnaul, "In
nearly all cases the women-led prohibition movements finally failed
because they did not get the necessary support from local police.
"Police get bribes from such illegal liquor shops on a regular basis.
If these shops are stopped they will lose their cuts. So police never
take action against such mushrooming bars," he said.
"Roshni Devi has succeeded in her movement against alcohol addicts in
her village because she spearheaded the movement while being the
sarpanch of the village. Administrative officials supported her and so
police were forced to shut down the liquor shops around Kothal Khurd."
The success of the Kothal Khurd movement has spurred women in about 20
of Haryana's villages to set up alcohol resistance groups.
"Only the collective resistance by women can put a halt to their men's
drinking habits," Roshni Devi said. "On our successful mission we have
also discovered that women too can wield power and can enforce
positive changes in a society."
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