A bad week for Messing with sisters India is witnessing a rise of vigilante groups, the most sensational of which is the gulabi, or pink gang. The founder of the gulabis is the fearless Sampat Pal Devi, 40. Married off at 12 she had the first of her five children at 15. The gulabis, whose members say they are a ‘gang for justice’, started in 2006 as a sisterhood that looked out for victims of domestic abuse. The United Nations estimates two in three married Indian women are victims.
Named after their hot-pink sari uniforms, the gang pays visits to abusive husbands and demand they stop the beatings. When obstinate men refuse to listen, the gulabis return with large bamboo sticks and ‘persuade’ them to change their ways. “When I go around with a stick, it’s to make men fear me. I don’t always use it, but it helps change the mind of men who think they are more powerful than me,” says Pal. The group now has more than 20,000 members, and the number is growing.
With a long list of criminal charges against her, including unlawful assembly, rioting, attacking a government employee, and obstructing an officer in the discharge of duty, Pal has had to go into hiding. In 2008 the group ambushed the local electricity office, which was withholding electricity until members received bribes or sexual favours. The stick-wielding gulabi stormed the company grounds and proceeded to rough up the staff inside the building. An hour later, the power was back on in the village.
In 2004, a mob of hundreds of women hacked to death the serial rapist and murderer Akku Yadav, after the courts had failed to convict him over 10 years. After the deed was done, the women collectively declared their guilt in the murder, frustrating police efforts to charge anyone with the crime.
The Cabinet on Monday deferred a decision to drop the blood-alcohol drink-drive limit for drivers over 20 from 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood to 50mg. The deferral was for two years to allow more research, the Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, said. He announced several measures that the Cabinet did approve: a three-year, zero drink-drive limit for recidivist offenders and drivers under 20, tougher penalties for serious driving offences causing death, and the introduction of alcohol interlocks for repeat drink-drivers. These will be introduced next year.
What the editorials said
“It is quite clear the Government is fearful of a political backlash should it proceed to lower the present adult limit,” the Otago Daily Times (Dunedin) said. The Government had badly fumbled its overhaul of the drink-drive laws by failing to tackle the centrepiece: “the blood-alcohol limit for all adult drivers,” The Nelson Mail wrote. “No matter that many of the proposed changes to the law approved by Cabinet on Monday are for the better. It has copped out on a long-overdue reduction of the limit, and made itself look feeble and even shifty in the process.” It was an opportunity missed, The Press (Christchurch) said. The Dominion Post (Wellington) said overseas studies had shown that 50mg – the equivalent of two standard drinks for a male of average height and weight in the first hour and one drink per hour thereafter – was sufficient to affect the driving of most adult motorists. “Research in this country is limited, but Safer Journeys, a report issued earlier this year by [Mr] Joyce, stated that drivers aged over 30 with blood alcohol levels of 80mg were about 16 times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than motorists who had not been drinking. Drivers with a level of 50mg were about six times more likely to be involved in fatalities,” it said. “Armed with such compelling evidence, the proper course of action for the Government appeared clear: lower the maximum alcohol level to save lives.” In an editorial headed ‘Bottling out’, The Timaru Herald said it would be very difficult to look past what National’s current internal polling might be telling the party to gauge the reason for such a backdown. It would cost votes. “ … here’s a bit of analysis that falls short of rocket science, but tells its own story. In two years time, when the new round of research has been completed, we’ll be out of the current electoral cycle and in the early months of the new one, giving National, which seems sure at this point to be elected to lead the next government, plenty of time to bed in a lowering of the limit before Kiwis next go to the polls in 2014.”
And …
Given the money, time, and energy the Government had poured into alcohol and road safety messages over the past 10 years, it was perplexing that Cabinet had opted to keep the limit, the Taranaki Daily News (New Plymouth) wrote. “It’s almost as if we trained the troops and dug the trenches but in the end decided against waging war against a foe intent on killing innocents.” The backdrop, it said was a generation of youngsters brought up on a diet of anti-drink-driving messages. These were stock-in-trade to Generation Y and their parents. “Now, though, it seems that Government is not prepared to match its bark with bite. Is it because it is concerned about losing voters or the support from the hospitality sector and drink barons if it cuts what Mr Joyce has called our ridiculously high drink driving limits?” The research was already in, The New Zealand Herald (Auckland) said. It had been enough to convince New Zealand health experts, and the likes of the Alcohol Advisory Council, the Drug Foundation, the National Addiction Centre and Alcohol Healthwatch, to strongly advocate lowering the limit. The Law Commission and the Ministry of Transport were, similarly, adamant. “The ministry [of Transport] estimates a 50mg limit would save between 15 and 33 lives, prevent up to 686 injuries and save between $111 million and $238m every year. In situations like this, where those with expertise are virtually unanimous, governments should provide a principled lead,” it said. “Few health and driving issues have been more thoroughly researched, particularly internationally, than alcohol’s effects,” the ODT wrote. “More research – whatever that might really mean – is hardly likely to change the already well-defined outcome of alcohol levels and human functional impairment: it costs lives, vast sums of money, and, like a pebble thrown into a pond, its lasting impacts ripple through the community.” The Cabinet’s decision was surprising, given a growing ‘maturity’ in New Zealand over drinking, The Marlborough Express (Blenheim) said. “Zero tolerance for drink-driving exists in many countries with a Muslim majority, for obvious reasons, but a number of other countries have taken the plunge, including Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Japan and Russia. And a slew of countries have opted for 50mg of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood or less, including Australia.”
What next
Research will be done. “Once the Government has finished … it might as well take a further couple of years to check out whether the laws of physics, as commonly reported to apply internationally, actually impact on New Zealanders,” The Southland Times wrote.
