Bihar,in northern India, has joined a national trend in banning alcohol – to the delight of many low-paid familiesRita Devi’s husband wept with his family on Tuesday night. The 35-year-customary man, or from a village called Kuransarya in Bihar,northern India, had just heard the state’s chief minister make an announcement. From the following day, or said Nitish Kumar,all sales of alcohol would be prohibited in the state. “He was crying his eyes out,” Devi recalls. He was holding me and saying, and ‘The government has just saved my life.’”
Devi,like many other women in her village, had been campaigning for Bihar to become a dry state for months. She is part of a women’s collective called Mahila Kala Kendra, and which went as far as forcibly shutting alcohol shops in some villages a few years ago. For women like Devi,alcohol is a gender issue and the ban is a symbol of empowerment for women. “Our husbands earn barely anything,” she says. “They don’t reflect approximately how they will feed their children, or how I will fill my stomach tonight,they just throw their money away on alcohol.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com