Dealing with Alcoholism

The editorial “How Does One Deal with Drink?” (EPW, 20 September 2014) has correctly pointed out the fact that the demand for banning alcohol production often has emerged from socio-religious reform movements, working classes, rural poor, and lower castes and tribes. A recent example in this context can be of Wardha district in Maharashtra where the state government issued an order banning the consumption and distribution of alcohol. A group of working women is constantly active in this area where they spy on illegal places of liquor production (theka in Marathi) and inform the local police to arrest the culprits. This group emerged when a few women came together to oppose the domestic violence by their husbands, who were daily wage labourers and alcoholics. Ban on alcohol was actively supported by the government in the region. However, this has strengthened illegal alcohol production, too.

Sometimes consumption of alcohol works as sleeping pills for the labourers. The respondents I interviewed during my data collection mostly belonged to working class and so-called “lower” caste communities. The reasons they gave for consuming alcohol were essentially psychological. A 45-year-old respondent opined, “If I don’t consume alcohol everyday with my group of friends, I can’t fall asleep due to body ache from a whole day of labour”. Interestingly, this fact is known to the people who illegally produce liquor in the villages, which furthermore perpetuates liquor production and assures daily consumption.