OUR HERO - GIRIJA DEVI
MUSAHAR community is Treated as Untouchables [Unfortunately Even Today] are from Bihar.
Population: More than 1 & Quarter Million
Diet: Sometimes includes Rats Due to Poverty.
ILLITERACY: 99% [It’s Illiteracy not Literacy & Lowest in India]
LANDLESS: 98%
This Musahars mostly work on the farms owned by landlords and go without work for up to eight months a year. Half of their meager earnings used to be wasted on rampant Alcoholism. The men would come home and physically abuse their wives! Natural victims were women and children the most.
Few yrs ago GIRIJADEVI from her dirt-poor village of Bhirkia-Chhapaulia in East Champaran district, having enough of it decided to pick up the gauntlet and launch a war against alcoholism.
Leading a group of women, she demolished local liquor vends and toddy pots hung on the trees by their men.
When the sorority found the men drinking, they shaved their heads, garlanded them with shoes and paraded them around the village to shame them into kicking the bottle.
Girija Devi has always led by example - her husband Singheshwar Majhi was the first alcoholic to face her wrath.
Her untiring efforts have led to 125 Musahar villages in East Champaran to become "alcohol free".
"Earlier our men would come home Drunk and BEAT us up. Now things have completely changed, and our husbands TREAT US with RESPECT. All Thanks to GIRIJA DEVI," says Dhanmati Devi, a local villager.
NEW {W}INNINGS of GIRIJA DEVI
Girija Devi did not stop with combating alcoholism alone - the mother of four children has pushed for roads, schools, teachers and doctors in her villages.
She blocked roads, locked up government offices and squatted on railroad tracks to demand for development of her village.
Now, thanks to her efforts, Bhirkia-Chhapaulia has a primary school, a brick road and drinking water supply. Seventy per cent of the villagers have got basic government-built homes.
The indefatigable woman is still not satisfied with what she has achieved.
"I want a high school, a primary health centre, better drinking water, jobs for our men. I will not stop till I get all this from the government," she says.
Girija Devi has already been elected member of a local village council and she has achieved this in a state which has always been let down by its elected lawmakers and where criminalisation of politics is complete.
MUSAHAR community is Treated as Untouchables [Unfortunately Even Today] are from Bihar.
Population: More than 1 & Quarter Million
Diet: Sometimes includes Rats Due to Poverty.
ILLITERACY: 99% [It’s Illiteracy not Literacy & Lowest in India]
LANDLESS: 98%
This Musahars mostly work on the farms owned by landlords and go without work for up to eight months a year. Half of their meager earnings used to be wasted on rampant Alcoholism. The men would come home and physically abuse their wives! Natural victims were women and children the most.
Few yrs ago GIRIJADEVI from her dirt-poor village of Bhirkia-Chhapaulia in East Champaran district, having enough of it decided to pick up the gauntlet and launch a war against alcoholism.
Leading a group of women, she demolished local liquor vends and toddy pots hung on the trees by their men.
When the sorority found the men drinking, they shaved their heads, garlanded them with shoes and paraded them around the village to shame them into kicking the bottle.
Girija Devi has always led by example - her husband Singheshwar Majhi was the first alcoholic to face her wrath.
Her untiring efforts have led to 125 Musahar villages in East Champaran to become "alcohol free".
"Earlier our men would come home Drunk and BEAT us up. Now things have completely changed, and our husbands TREAT US with RESPECT. All Thanks to GIRIJA DEVI," says Dhanmati Devi, a local villager.
NEW {W}INNINGS of GIRIJA DEVI
Girija Devi did not stop with combating alcoholism alone - the mother of four children has pushed for roads, schools, teachers and doctors in her villages.
She blocked roads, locked up government offices and squatted on railroad tracks to demand for development of her village.
Now, thanks to her efforts, Bhirkia-Chhapaulia has a primary school, a brick road and drinking water supply. Seventy per cent of the villagers have got basic government-built homes.
The indefatigable woman is still not satisfied with what she has achieved.
"I want a high school, a primary health centre, better drinking water, jobs for our men. I will not stop till I get all this from the government," she says.
Girija Devi has already been elected member of a local village council and she has achieved this in a state which has always been let down by its elected lawmakers and where criminalisation of politics is complete.
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