When our men folk do not have money, they sell away our rice, ghee or anything that fetches them arrack. They take away whatever they can lay their hands on.... Apart from drinking they abuse us, pick up fights with us, slap our children. They make our day-to-day existence miserable.” Then we read the story of Sitamma’s in the primer. It made us think. Who is responsible for her death? We then told the sarpanch to close the arrack shop. But we could not succeed

“So next day, hundreds of us marched out of the village and stopped a cart of toddy. We told the owner to throw away the liquor. We said all of us would contribute one rupee to compensate his loss. He was terrified. From that day no toddy has entered our village. Then, when a jeep carrying arrack arrived in the village we surrounded it and warned the owner that we would lodge a complaint with the magistrate. This sent a shiver down his spine. He closed his shop. Now we gained in confidence. We realised that this victory was possible only through education. This year no one dared to participate in the arrack auction.”

This took place in 1992 and was not an isolated incident. As the news spread, women of other villages too put an end to the sale of arrack in their villages. Eventually, they marched in thousands to stop the annual auction of arrack contract by the Collector of Nellore district. The Collector postponed the auction six times and eventually the auction had to be cancelled

In other areas women led marches against liquor shops and picketed and tried to close down the shops. They tried to stop the sale of alcohol by preventing the stocking of the shops or deterring the customers from purchasing liquor. Liquor shopkeepers who refused to close their shops had to face picketing, throwing out liquor packets stored in the shops or setting the alcohol on fire. In several villages, women shaved the moustaches or the heads of intractable men, or even paraded them through the village on donkeys. In addition, men often had to swear oaths in temples to stop drinking. After innumerable meetings and protests by women across the state, arrack was officially banned in October 1993 and total prohibition was imposed in 1995.

These women belonged to the poorest section of our society, from the dalit castes who were deeply tormented by the increasing addiction to arrack among their husbands and other men folk. Many of these women had begun to go to literacy classes and often they would discuss this problem there. These classes gave them a place to discuss their lives and build networks of contacts. Once the movement started, its experiences were quickly transmitted to women across the state through the literacy primers which were read by women in all districts of the state. Thus women, from the most deprived sections were able to stand up against the most powerful and violent lobby of arrack manufacturers and sellers who not only had a lot of money and muscle power but also political power. SCER