A group of women in the village passed a resolution asking for the local liquor store to be shut down permanently.
A two-month-long campaign against liquor by the women of Kacchabalee village in Rajasthan's Rajsamand district ended on Tuesday with almost the entire village voting to shut down the local liquor shop in their gram panchayat.
The referendum on whether the village could shut the liquor shop was organised by the district administration. With a Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) overseeing it, the vote for or against liquor was like a proper panchayat election. Voting began at 8 am and ended at 5 pm. Of the 2039 people who voted today, 1937 - which is nearly 94 per cent - voted to shut down the liquor shop. According to excise department rules, 51 per cent of the electorate has to vote against liquor for there to be a ban in the area.
It all started on January 26, when a group of women in the village passed a resolution asking for the local liquor store to be shut down permanently.
"Because of alcoholism people die either in road accidents or due to illness... the men who drink often beat their wives," said Sita Devi, who moved the resolution.
In the past five years, 84 people have died in accidents caused by drunk driving.
"Almost every other family here has lost somebody to alcoholism," said SDM Narendra Kumar Jain.
Khimi Devi, one of the women at the forefront of the campaign, said "Women earn sometimes Rs 100 a day to feed their families, and what do drunkard husbands do, they come and snatch that money away to drink. How can you expect a woman to feed small children when all her earnings will go into drinking?"
Gattu Devi's husband died five years ago, his liver packed up due to excessive drinking. "I am still paying back the Rs 2 lakh loan I took for his treatment."
The social impact of this one of a kind voting that happened in a remote village of Rajasthan is yet to be absorbed, but it is a big step forward for democracy, especially at the grass roots level.