Fighting Drugs or Performing a Fight Against Drugs
Bilal Ahmad Khanday
The Government of India has recently launched the nationwide Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan. Drug and alcohol addiction in India has long been a silent crisis, impacting individuals, families, and communities across both urban and rural landscapes. To combat this life-threatening challenge, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment launched the Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan (NMBA) on August 15, 2020, with a vision to make India drug-sensitive and resilient against substance abuse.
The word abhiyan literally means a campaign, a mission, or a drive, and its primary objective is to involve stakeholders who may be directly or indirectly affected by substance abuse or are vulnerable to it. The main stakeholders and beneficiaries of the NMBA are youth, women, children, educational institutions, civil society, and the community at large.
Since the campaign was launched, a wide range of activities has been conducted throughout the country, fostering participation from all sections of society. There has been a shift from an earlier approach of organizational involvement to broader community participation in addressing substance abuse. States, districts, and other stakeholders have taken ownership of the Abhiyan, helping transform it into a mass movement.
But the questions that need to be addressed by policymakers are:
Will conferences and events, speeches and symposiums, rallies and marathons, workshops and warnings, and even demolitions bring the desired results envisioned by the nation?
Can any epidemic be controlled merely through rallies and marathons? And when it comes to the menace of drug addiction, can it truly be eradicated without a proper and robust system?
Do we have the practical understanding that drug addiction, which has now become a household crisis, cannot be controlled through events and rallies alone?
Do we genuinely believe that this serious health crisis can be controlled only through conferences and events, speeches and symposiums, rallies and marathons, workshops, warnings, and endless narrative cycles?
These questions need to be addressed by those at the helm of affairs. But to the common masses, it increasingly appears that “we are not fighting drugs; rather, we are performing a fight against drugs.”
From schools to colleges to universities; from teachers to doctors to advocates; from Panchs to Sarpanchs to BDCs and DDCs; from SHOs to SPs to SSPs; from Tehsildars to Sub-Divisional Magistrates to Deputy Commissioners — we all seem to be performing assigned roles.
Had we truly been fighting this menace tooth and nail with a proper and strategic system, the story would have been entirely different. The number of addicts would have drastically declined. Instead, the numbers continue to rise at an alarming rate despite these measures by the administration and despite crores of rupees being spent from the public exchequer — seemingly with little impact. Pardon me if I am wrong, but I call a spade a spade.
Do we realize that the world has already gone through what we are experiencing today? Different nations tried rallies, events, symposiums, seminars, and workshops, yet achieved little despite deploying their entire administrative machinery. Eventually, they shifted toward practical, pragmatic, and sustainable measures — and that changed the outcome.
Portugal, for example, changed its course by treating addicts as patients rather than criminals. It established counselling and rehabilitation centres. As a result, addiction rates declined significantly, deaths reduced, and lives were rebuilt.
Iceland, once severely affected by drug abuse, did not merely chase drugs. Instead, it devised policies and social systems to combat the crisis. It engaged youth in sports, structure, and purposeful activities, motivating them toward larger goals in life. The results changed the course of its history.
Ironically, we are still relying on rallies and marathons, events and workshops, believing that these alone will help us succeed in combating this life-threatening challenge. Here, unfortunately, suffering has become a stage for image-building, and governance has increasingly turned into performance.
Now, the even bigger questions are:
Millions of rupees of taxpayers’ money are being spent — but for what purpose?
Has the graph of addiction gone down?
Has recovery improved?
If the answers are no, then we must stop merely spending — or rather wasting — public money on sloganeering, symposiums, rallies, and marathons.
We need to introspect our policies and actions. We can arrest drug peddlers and demolish houses, but we cannot eliminate hopelessness, tension, trauma, unemployment, and social despair without addressing the root causes of addiction. These are often the real drivers behind substance abuse.
Things become even worse when addiction is shamed and criminalized. That is when people begin to hide behind masks. Families fall silent. The crisis deepens, and eventually, it threatens to shake the very foundations of society.
The solution does not lie only in rallies and marathons, symposiums and seminars. It lies in counselling, mental health support, rehabilitation centres with workable systems, meaningful youth engagement, and calculated, strategic policies that genuinely involve and support communities.
We must remember that drugs are not always the disease; often, they are a symptom.
And unless we stop performing the crisis and start treating its real causes and symptoms, nothing will truly change.
