 |
|
||
 |
|||
| Improve Your World | Home | About Us | Sitemap | Search | Contact Us | ||
|
|
||||||||
| Also see : Rural Development, Social / Rural Innovations |
| Please help us in making this a comprehensive resource section for those directly connected or affected by this issue e.g. citizens, NGOs, government officers, students, teachers, researchers. Please directly upload or email us relevant content. This can include lists, articles, photographs, research papers, links to websites, etc. Please volunteer as an expert panelist to whom we can direct queries from our website visitors. |
| Home >> Rural Development : News Articles >> Rural Development : News Articles |   Email this Page |
|
|||
|
Women weed out alcohol, bring cheer
We would hide in the fields at night to look out for the alcohol seller, then run in a group to hit him. RUHINA SHAIKH of Kodori village
The village has become litter-free. Dustbins have been put up in places. The mindset of the people has changed. D.P. TANMANHE, gramsevak of Tipeshwar
T HEY WERE left to drown in their misery. And in alcohol. Even vehicles wouldn't halt at this village, fearing to be robbed by inebriated hoodlums. Relatives of the villagers would never pay a visit out of sheer disgust; there would be a brawl nearly every day with someone getting injured. Shunned by the outside world, even 10-year-olds would be found sipping alcohol hiding in the fields in Kodori, a village in Yavatmal on the Andhra border.
This was a year ago. Now, children play in the gardens and men sweat it out in the fields. Ten women with a grim resolve have made the village alcohol-free. For the last seven years, women from the village had endured violence by drunk husbands, besides battling with local hooligans, to weed out alcoholism in this village. "When our children started drinking we couldn't handle it. Two people used to come in from another village to sell alcohol. When we tried to stop them they would abuse and hit us, threaten to molest the girls. Tired of all this, we started hitting these men when they came to the village," said Indira Parchake (40), the self-help group leader who was thrown out of her house for trying to ban alcohol. "It wasn't an easy time. Our husbands would drive us out because they wouldn't get to drink. We slept in the temple. Besides, the alcohol seller start ed pouring kerosene on us and throwing chilly powder into our eyes to scare us," recalled Devabai Meshram. Her 18year-old brother died after drinking spurious alcohol. After a woman was murdered by her husband in a drunken fit, the women here did not sleep for weeks. "We knew it could happen to anyone. We would hide in the fields at night to look out for the seller. Then run in a group to hit him. But our village adjoins a river which runs into another state. When we banned selling alcohol in the village, the sellers would get it on a boat and threaten us that if we did something they would complain to the other state's police," said Ruhina Shaikh (20). The women then pooled their savings to hire a bus to Andhra Pradesh. "We complained to the police there. The sellers haven't come since a year, the men drink less and fight less. Kids go to school and men go to work," said Parchake. The woman, who was thrown out of her house by her husband a few years ago, runs a self-group which does goat farming. Each woman has saved up to Rs 1 lakh. "My son has got admission in a medical school. If alcoholism hadn't been dealt with, he might have been the last one from the village. Now we can hope for more doctors from this village," said Parchake. |
| Also see : Rural Development, Social / Rural Innovations |
