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Chandrapur to become third district to ban liquor after pressure from local women

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After Wardha and Gadchiroli in Vidarbha, neighbouring Chandrapur will soon become the third district in Maharashtra to become liquor-free, with the state government planning to impose prohibition after demands from local women.

"The proposal will be brought before the cabinet soon," said Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, who is an MLA from Ballarpur in Chandrapur and is spearheading the proposal.

Mungantiwar, who had demanded prohibition in the district during his days in the opposition, and had also moved a private members Bill, added that the state will have to create a machinery to stop smuggling of liquor into the district, which borders Wardha and Gadchiroli, and rehabilitate those whose livelihoods had been affected.

The demand was born out of a popular movement seeking a ban on the brew. A total of 588 of 847 gram panchayats in Chandrapur had demanded prohibition and 5,000 working class women went on a 130km-long march from Chimur to Nagpur during the winter session in 2010.

While prohibition has been imposed in Wardha because of historical links with Mahatma Gandhi, whose Sewagram Ashram is located there, Gadchiroli became liquor-free in 1992. Once prohibition is imposed in Chandrapur, the retailing licences will be shifted to other areas, barring the two dry districts, and de-addiction programmes will be conducted.

"Women have been demanding this for years. The licences from Wardha and Gadchiroli were shifted to Chandrapur, and beer bars, wine shops and country liquor shops were set up in villages without any regard to area and population norms. For instance, a village with 500 people had three vends. Increase in alcohol consumption led to families being destroyed, even schoolchildren took to drinking and women and girls felt unsafe in public places," said social activist Paromita Goswami of Shramik Elgar. She added that retailers had also established supply networks to take liquor to other parts and the brew was smuggled into Wardha and Gadchiroli.

Goswami rued that their appeals to the state government to change rules, which were biased in favour of the liquor lobby, fell on deaf ears, which led to them demanding in 2010 that prohibition be imposed in the district.

After the 2010 march, the state government set up a committee in February 2011 under then environment minister and Chandrapur's guardian minister Sanjay Deotale. The committee submitted its report to then chief minister Prithviraj Chavan a year later, recommending prohibition. Goswami said the committee received memorandums signed by around 1 lakh people.

However, the government's inaction and reluctance to make the report public led to resentment and jail bharo agitations. During the Lok Sabha polls, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who was the BJP state chief, and then home minister RR Patil were gheraoed by protesters. This led Chavan to announce that the district would go dry after the polls, but the promise did not materialise, forcing women to tonsure their heads outside Deotale's house on August 14.

However, social activist Dr Vikas Amte, who was part of the committee, pointed out that "in isolation, prohibition will not work". "Instead, I will moot a paradigm approach, like creation of smart villages, as a huge number of migrant labour here comes from rural areas across India," he said.

"Why people drink is an issue which must be addressed first. Labourers do hard work and liquor and substance abuse are a panacea easily available to them... to forget the exploitation of labour, grief and pain," said Amte, the elder son of activist Baba Amte, adding that a comprehensive approach was necessary. He added that otherwise, like in Wardha and Chandrapur, vested interests would ensure availability of liquor despite prohibition.

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