The Hooch Tragedy - Looking under the hood....

The last few days have been a night mare for many families in Ahmedabad, specially for the poor labour class and the police. Poisonous county liquor has caused over 130 deaths so far, and we are still counting, with many more men in a critical condition and even more still consuming the county liquor. Now, whatever has happened, has happened; lets take a look under the hood and see what went wrong ...

Gujarat is a "dry state", which basically means that sale and consumption of liquor is baned. If you are caught with a bottle or worse, caught drunk, its a lot of police and legal mess for you (if you are lucky, you may get away with paying bribes, but we are all goody-goody and wont admit that happens, right?). In spite of the dry laws, Gujarat is not really dry. People do manage to smuggle in the alcohol and do consume it. (One thing I must point out is that you'll hardly find a drunkard on the road, people consume alcohol and then stay at home).

The police is normally hand-in-glove with the suppliers. They know who smuggles in the "good stuff", how they smuggle it in, who all are the regular consumers, etc. They have all the details you could think off. And yet, the choose to look away ! Probably, such a network is useful to them for procuring details about various criminals and terrorists. Yet this time, they have been caught on the wrong foot. A leading English daily ran a front page story detailing which police office gets how big a cut of the pie!

The poor labor class of the city. The ones who do the most menial of work. The ones without who, none of the other classes of society can function. What do those men do once they are done with yet another long hard day of work? Go home, rest and eat some food the wife/mother has prepared, and then, go to a county liquor den and drink away their day's earnings. Well most of them do that. If they manage to find their way back home, they will beat up the wife and kids. Ask the women folk of such men. They work as house maids or as cleaners in hospitals or as day laborers in farms, not to supplement their men's earnings, because the men have no earnings to supplement. The men earn and spend it all on liquor. Its the women's money that burns the fire in the kitchen and fills the stomach of the family members. And now, its those very hard working women, who are bearing the brunt of the spurious liquor. Its they who had to rush their drunken "better halves" to the hospitals, its they who had to beg the doctors and run pillar-to-post ensuring their "better halves" get a dialysis machine. And now, its these hard-working women, who will bring up their children as single mothers and provide for the rest of the family (which in any case, they were doing, but the man is always a moral support).

In the aftermath of this tragedy, a lot of people have come out blaming the dry laws of the state as the culprit for the widespread sale of county liquor. A very prominent industrialist and aviation big-wig even claimed that if the dry laws are done away with, we wont have the county liquor being sold and hence, never-ever will such tragedies repeat themselves. Personally, I don't think doing away with the dry laws will make any difference. In the other states, the labor class still depends on the county liquor as the actual branded stuff is still too expensive for them to buy. In Gujarat, those who can afford the branded stuff, still do consume it, and those who cant, still wont be able to afford it if the dry laws are lifted. The only thing that lifting the dry laws will affect is the law and order situation of Gujarat. The state will not be as safe a place as it now claims to be (though this image of Gujarat has also taken a beating recently). Crimes against women, such as eve-teasing, rapes, etc and accidents due to drunken driving will rise in the absence of dry laws.

The solution of this problem is not with the dry laws. This problem was born as a side effect of the Industrial Revolution and is there to stay till the men don't learn to respect their bodies and their families.

The solution of this problem is in educating the society. Of course, this is a very idealist solution and is not easy to implement at all. The men have to be taught to not depend on alcohol or tobacco to relieve their tensions. Its high time the men take a few lessons from the women folk. A woman, specially of the labor class, has many more things occupying her mind, but she'll never be seen indulging in a hard drink, or a smoke. She knows she has to take care of the children and of the husband. And in being fully aware of these responsibilities, she learns to swallow her worries and not resort to abusing her body.

So, men, buck up and learn to face the harsh realities of life without looking for refuge in alocohol and tobacco. You have a lovely mother/wife/sister/daughter to learn your lessons from. Its best you learn them quickly rather than have the women take things in their hands and move so far ahead socially, economically and emotionally, that you'd then just be a (use and throw?) tool "to make babies" for them (maybe even science will then support women and eliminate your need for that too)!!