Haunted by Alcoholism

Mumtaz was married off early. She never imagined that married life would turn out to be so inconvenient. Her husband is an alcoholic and over the years has become so weak that he can hardly work to earn money. She has no one to support in chores and was forced to work in local industries to run the family. She is not the only one who is affected with this epidemic. The problem of consumption of liquor is rampant in poorer households. The locals usually drink spurious liquor and while liquor itself weakens the system, spurious liquor can be fatal. Slowly it has taken a toll on large male population health in the area and has left them incompetent to work.

         The men non-working attitude has led to loans pilling up and families were tossed up in violent and abusive households. Mumtaz, 40 years old women, amid this skirmish with life is expecting her first child and is 6 month pregnant. In her last meeting with her doctor she was advised to be regular with her medical checkups, as the doctors feared some complications in her pregnancies. But Mumtaz could hardly afford any medical expenses and decided to dodge her doctor appointments. But the fact that she needs medical care always kept her in turmoil.

The complete withdrawal of her husband role from her life made the matter worse. Finally, a ray of hope for Mumtaz- to dispose of her problems in life- came in the face of SoochnaPreneur project. The SoochnaPreneur duo-Irfan and Akram- are responsible for Nangal Khanjadi village in Alwar, Rajasthan. Both of them work on information dissemination, promotion of government schemes and entitlements and digital literacy. In one of their visits to Nangal Khanjadi, they met Mumtaz. After understanding her dilemma, the SoochnaPreneurs began mapping her case and suggested “Janani Suraksha Yojna” – a government scheme for reducing maternal and infant mortality by promoting institutional delivery among pregnant women. The SoochnaPreneurs helped her in completing the paper work and arranging the requisite documents required for the scheme application. After filling up the form, the SoochnaPreneurs personally went to the panchayat and other government departments to get the application authenticated by the authorities. Today, Mumtaz is availing the benefits under the scheme and is in much happy space. After she received the cash assistance from the government, she is timely seeing her doctor to ensure safe child delivery.  Like Mumtaz, there were many expecting women in the area not aware of the scheme have come forward to apply for the schemes benefits.