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A Sobering Role for Women

by Bharat Dogra
A grassroots women's movement against alcohol is taking rural India by storm, and has.attained political centre-stage.RAMPAL Singh did not take his first swig of arrack until he was 25. But two years later he was hopelessly hooked. Instead of providing for his family, Rampal was drinking away his meagre earnings as a farmhand.
lie beat his wife Shanti whenever she demanded money for running the home and looking after their two children in tlieir little village on the outskirts of this north Indian town.
But Shanti was not about to Just weep in one corner while her husband turned into an alcoholic. Two years ago, as Rampal staggered home from a drinking binge. Rampal got a shock when he opened the door to his hut to find himself among almost all the village women — including Shanti. They wanted help in getting the local liquor shop shut down.
Intrigued, he followed the women to the liquor-kiosk where the wives raised slogans and sang songs against alcohol. Thev continued unfazed even when the liquor contractor's meh threatened to beat them up.
Rampal was Impressed by their valour and enthusiasm. He began quietly accompanying them to their protest meetings and soon became an active participant.
"The movement helped me give up the bottle and save my life from ruin," says Rampal, who has not touched a drop of liquor for more than a year now.
A grassroots antl-liquor movement, usually led by women, has taken rural India by storm over the past two decades.
In the central state of Andhra Pradesh, a women-led grassroots antt-alcohol campaign snowballed last year into a political movement and became such a hot issue in state elections that the government that came to power outlawed alcohol altogether.
Some say such drastic measures may actually create prob-lems of moonshine and strengthen the alcohol mafia, but it does indicate the power of women in grassroots activism.
The movement started in 1992 in the town of Dubakunta in Andhra Pradesh, where a local woman was inspired by a story she read in her adult literacy class.
When three .drunk men from the village drowned one night, the women got together to hold protest meeting and demonstrations outside the local liquor store.
Then they formed squads to stop trucks carrying liquor and launched a vigorous campaign to get their men to kick the habit. Their success prompted women in neighbouring villages to take up the struggle and It soon spilled over to other districts of the state.
Soon, the antl-liquor movement in Andhra Pradesh had become strong enouglP to stop the auctions of liquor stores in important regional centres of the state.
Realising the political potential of the mass upsurge, the
regional Telugu Desam party made prohibition a major plank of their state election campaign last year.
The party swept the polls, decimating Prime Minister Naraslmha Rao s Congress party. One of the first decisions the Telugu Desam ministry took after being sworn in was the imposition of prohibition in the state.
In the tiny northern state of Haryana, the movement appears to have reached a flash-point. Separate antl-liquor movements in the state's villages, again led chiefly by women, are now coalescing to produce a mass upsurge.
Noted social activist Swami Agnivesh. who has organised a number of anti-liquor marches, is trying to form a political party called the Arya Sabha centred around the issue.
"Anti-liquor feelings have spread so rapidly that several opposition parties have been forced to honour these feelings and they have accepted the prohibition demand to a greater or lesser extent." he says.
"This is a classic case of popular sentiment pushing a grass-roots concern onto the nation’s political agenda," says a social activist.
But one of the leaders of the movement in Haryana, activist Virendra Dahiya, warns, against overconfidence and complacency. Says Dahiya: "Any slackness in our efforts at this stage could lead to the loss of all the gains we have made through two decades of sustained efforts"
Perhaps the most successful of these movements began in the mining town of Dalli-Rajhara in. the tribal regions of the central Indian state of Madya Pradesh in the late seventies.
A workers' union of iron-ore miners, known by Its Hindi acronym CMSS. had won significapt economic gains for badly exploited miners. But the union leaders were apprehensive that the higher wages would be squandered on liquor in an area where addiction was rampant.
The CMSS launched a strong educational campaign against’ liquor addiction followed by a fast by one of Its most popular labour leaders to check the sale and purchase of liqiior.
The CMSS was able to create a climate where the workers felt resorting to increase liquor consumption would be a betrayal of the union which had fought for their rights. Initially more than 4,000 workers took a pledge never to drink alcohol again.
Since then, as the reach of the union Increased, more and more workers have been taking up the pledge in the region. Says Sonaribai. a tribal woman from Dalli-Rajhara: If previously our people used to consume one rupee (about three US cents) worth of liquor, now they consume liquor worth only a quarter of that amount."