First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink,

then the drink takes you. ~ Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald

LIQUOR SPELL DOOM FOR SLUMDOG PAUPERS OF BOLANGIR TOWN
The first thing in the human personality that dissolves in alcohol is dignity. And it becomes evident as every morning the streets of Bolangir town are taken over by children of Chamarpara in Bolangir’s Shudhpara slum area who move around with bags to shine shoes of people. The bags are the one they once took books to schools but carry brush and polish today. The very fact that no Chamar children of the Bolangir town have crossed high school level of education speaks volumes about they way life is for these children.
Chamars or the cobblers, is a dalit community, and one of the prominent constituents of beneficiaries in all the high profile development projects that come to this much popular KBK region. Trapped inside abject poverty and penury with hopes of its receeding a distant dream, the Chamars of Bolangir town, are suffering not because they are not earning but because they are illiterate and addicted to country liquor. A visit to the Chamarpada and you are welcomed by the smell of country liquor which fills the air besides pouring from each mouth one talks to.
Today, there condition can be rightly summed up as Danny McGoorty has said “I realized that what I had turned out to be was a lousy, two-bit pool hustler and drunk, I wasn't depressed at all. I was glad to have a profession”. “We cannot manage without drinking because our occupation is such”, said Dingra Meher who is finding it hard to shift to other occupation after having carried on with the trade through generation. Education has never been a priority to them which squeezes the opportunity for shifting trade for the Chamar children further.
But there is along story behind the children not going to school which finds its antecedent to tension between two communities. And surprisingly, it continues till date and no steps have yet been initiated to improve the situation. Recalling about the incident some 13 years back Bhima Meher said that he was regularly beaten by his teacher regularly after children of harijan community complained that he was freely mingling with them in the class. And Bhima’s effort to pursue education ended then and there. At that time he was studying class two and the simmering tension and difference between the two communities haunts them till date. Bhima has now taken to his family occupation of ‘shoe polish’ and earns about 30 to 40 rupees a day.
But it is not just the discrimination which has kept the children away from school. A closer look at the entire scenario holds the liquor shop located between Bolangir’s Chamarpara and Shudhpara Primary School responsible for the blockade of futureof the children. With parents said to be the first teachers of a child, the children take to drinking quite early in their lives and try to be macho back in their slum.
Admitting the fact, Nabaghana Meher, (25), the highest educated boy of the Chamarpara trying to reform things, said that since children those who go to school also work before and after their school and earn half the amount of their parent, access to money is easier for them. Pointing out that big size of family also force this children to contribute to family income, he said that the children too get addicted to liquor easily. Moreover, even if they save it is snatched by their father to drink.
While attempts to shift the liquor shop that exists in between Chamar children and their school have ended in a naught, there is need for the state government to decide whether its decision to promote liquor in such sensitive areas, all in the name of earning revenue is justified or not.