Alcohol Use and Intimate Partner Violence in Uttar Pradesh, India

Violence within the household has been emerged as a potential factor for physical, mental, sexual, reproductive and child health as well as contraceptive behaviour and infant mortality also. Physical violence against women is one of the gender based violence and affects women’s status in many ways. But which factors derive the dynamics of physical violence is not received adequate attention in India. This study examines the relationship between alcohol use and physical violence as a public health issue. For this study the most populous state of India which is Uttar Pradesh has been considered and the data has been taken from NFHS-III (2005-06). It was observed that 44 percent of women have been physically abused by their husbands. If their husband takes alcohol sometime and often the prevalence of physical violence has been found to be 58 and 77 percent respectively, however, it is only 38 percent in case where husband does not take alcohol. Logistic regression results show significant effects of husband’s alcohol drinking behaviour on physical violence. It was also observed that education, occupation, eligible women in house, standard of living, media exposure and proper spousal communication are possible predictive measures of physical violence.