our Uttarakhand government controled the liqour distribution

read your strong views on alcoholism, and i appreciate your concern about its addiction in our uttranchali society.

i feel alcohol per se is not as bad as is the addiction of it. addiction of any thing for that matter is bad...
whether it is alcohol or tobacco or playing cards or anything else, then why only single out alcoholism.

the remedy that you had suggested also i found very very offensive.. how can humiliate somebody with whatever methods you had suggested if is drinking with his own money, at his own will, at his own house or at his friends house.

i think what we really need is to get down to the root of the problem.. the root of the problem is the large scale unemployment in Uttranchal.. . there ain't enough resources to keep people busy with some useful work which can also fetch them some money..

while the women folks work hard at fields, our men's are simply busy gossiping, discussing politics or playing cards and at the end of the day just booze for any good or bad reason or any occasion on this earth.

banning liqour or humiliating menfolks to keep them away from it is not the solution.... i still remember about two n half decades back when few of the uttranchal districts were dry.... in many places country liquor was doing a brisk business, traders were minting money by selling " Pudin Hara" n "ashoka sura" supposedly an ayurvedic medicine with large alcohol content.

Then there was a campaign to destroy these tarders which motivated lots of schools children to jump in to the campaign for this holy cause thereby exposing these school childrens to these drugs and that generation today is almost addicted to alcoholism.

i also feel the solution is not about creating awareness about the ills of alcoholism, the people are already aware of that....what we need is a revolution.. a revolution in creating job opportunities. . a revolution with the help of government and the ngos.
somtime i also feel tighening things have an adverse effect on people at large.. judgeing the popular sentiments our uttranchal government controled the liqour distribution and also imposed huge taxes on it thereby drainning people of their hard money because they are going to drink any way irrespective of the price.. may be to save some cost what best they would do is to compromise on quality therby compromise on their health...

so why not just do the reverse...open the distribution. . lower the taxes.. focus on quality...let the people know it is available everywhere at an affordable price, so may be the kind of importance it is given today would not be given anymore.

may be it would work.

a food for thought.