Punjab’s lost youth

A few minutes later,a friend brings what Mahlo has been craving for since morning—a shot each of Norgesic,a muscle relaxant,and Pheniramine Maleate,an anti-allergic. The price of Norgesic shot is Rs 15 and of Pheniramine Maleate Rs 7. Mahlo,however,spends Rs 200 to get the combination from the village itself,which,incidentally,doesn’t even have a chemist shop.

With an expert-like precision,Mahlo first uses the syringe to mix both the drugs,slowly pulls up his shirt to reveal his left arm,where the vein has swollen to look almost like an external organ,and starts injecting.

Around 200 metres away in the fields,35-year-old Chirmal Singh is busy rummaging through a pile of used medicine bottles and syringes in the hope of finding some leftovers. A few young boys,who the villagers say are outsiders,roam the streets looking for “supply”.

It’s another morning in Kazikot,a village that has attained such notoriety for drug abuse that now it struggles to find matches for its sons and daughters from other villages.

Mahlo’s father died only a week ago. He is the youngest of three brothers. The eldest,Chano,too is a drug addict. It is his second brother,Neeta,who works with a Bhangra dance troupe,who runs the family through his meager earnings. “I don’t do drugs. I only use liquor now and then,” he says,almost with a sense of pride. Mahlo says that Neeta doesn’t provide him with any money and that’s why he has to steal at times.

Mahlo went to school till Class IV before dropping out. Since then,he has been working as a daily wager whenever he manages to find some work. On most days,he is just looking at some way or the other to make those Rs 200 which will get him his respite.

Chirmal Singh,like most of the other addicts in the village,too,works as a daily wager. But since his search for drugs begins early morning everyday,being the breadwinner of his family is no priority for him.

A majority of the families in Kazikot have men who can only find jobs as daily wagers. And most of the addicts,too,come from this particular segment.

Worried over the bad name the village has been getting over the years due to this menace,villagers of Kazikot have been approaching the police seeking more patrolling. “Every morning,we used to have a crowd of young men gathering at a village common place to do drugs. We have started shooing them away,” says Sahib Singh,a villager. “We are also sensitising all villagers to ensure that youngsters are not allowed to use these drugs openly,” he says.

The crisis

Rahul Gandhi’s recent remarks that seven out of 10 youths in Punjab are hooked on drugs triggered a political uproar in the state. The figure may be wide off the mark but the problem is serious,especially in villages across Punjab’s three regions—Majha,Doaba and Malwa. Drug traffickers are said to have changed their overland route for smuggling drugs into India and now much of the drugs that come to the country are transited through Punjab.

A visit to a few border villages in Tarn Taran district,where a barbed-wire fence separates huge open fields in India and Pakistan,reveals why it is such a big challenge for the Border Security Force (BSF) to deal with cross-border smuggling. “There are vast tracts of fields where people can hide on either side of the fence and communicate,” says a BSF official.

Around two months ago,a package containing 4 kg of heroin was “thrown” from across the fenced border in the Bhikhiwind-Khemkaran sector. “The package was neatly wrapped and

secured with cello tape,” says a BSF official.

In village Havelian in Tarn Taran,just next to the fence that forms the international border between India and Pakistan,residents admit that drugs,heroin in particular,are not only easily available but both used and smuggled by villagers. “There is not even a single family here which doesn’t have at least one member in jail because of drug smuggling,” says a BSF official.

In addition to cross-border smuggling,narcotics and psychotropic substances like opium,poppy-husk,smack,ganja and charas are smuggled into Punjab from neighbouring states like Rajasthan,Haryana,Himachal Pradesh,Jammu & Kashmir,Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

With the focus once again on drug addiction,Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal recently said that the Centre should impose an immediate ban on the sale of poppy-husk in Rajasthan. He also put the onus on the Centre by saying that it was the “moral obligation” of the Centre to deal with this as a national problem.

The recoveries

This year alone,more than 2,300 cases have been registered under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act by the Punjab Police in the districts of Amritsar,Jalandhar,Ludhiana and Tarn Taran and 2,594 people have been arrested for drug trafficking.

Tarn Taran,probably the worst-affected district,alone had 847 cases registered under the NDPS Act and 873 arrests till early October. In addition to the drug-related cases and arrests,Tarn Taran has also seen 440 cases and 444 arrests so far this year under the Excise Act for illicit liquor.

The BSF alone has seized around 235 kg of heroin in the state till mid-October this year. The Customs recently seized 105 kg of heroin,worth around Rs 525 crore,from the goods train coming from Pakistan to Attari. Security officials say that there is big money involved in smuggling heroin since a kg of heroin that costs Rs 2 lakh in Pakistan gets sold for Rs 12 lakh in India.

BSF Inspector General Aditya Mishra says since smugglers from across the border tried the conventional routes initially and many of them got killed in the process,they are now trying other means. “Eleven smugglers were killed trying to smuggle drugs into India in the first few months of this year. So now they are looking at other avenues. A lot of drug is pouring into Punjab because the state has become a catchment area. Also,there is reason to believe that Naxals are promoting cultivation of drug-yielding plants in areas like Jharkhand and these drugs are finding their way into Punjab,” he says.

Mishra also reveals a new modus operandi—hide and clear. “A consignment meant to be smuggled into our territory is hidden in the fields across the fence. Indian farmers who are allowed to go across the fence to till their lands are then targeted as potential couriers of these packages. In the past three months,we have had at least 10 incidents where a farmer who had gone across to till his land was caught trying to smuggle a consignment back,” he says.

Punjab shares a 550 km border with Pakistan. Of this,50 km have rivers flowing through it. BSF officials say despite all the checks in place,there are frequent attempts to smuggle drugs into India through the rivers.

The BSF now plans to launch a major publicity campaign against drug abuse among the border population. During the assembly elections in the state early this year,the Election Commission recovered more than 10,000 litres of illicit liquor,more than a lakh bottles of country-made liquor and around 3 lakh tablets and capsules which were targeted at wooing voters.

In July this year,two women from village Ganna in Phillaur were arrested by the local police and 140 kg poppy-husk recovered from them. Many more women have been arrested from Ganna and several other villages in the Doaba region on charges of drug trafficking.

The cure

“In Punjab,we are treating an addict like a culprit and not a victim. The state government’s approach is curative,not preventive. The government has opened drug de-addiction centres. But why not do something to nip the evil in the bud?” says Dr Ranvinder Singh Sandhu,a professor of sociology at Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University. “Poverty is not the only problem in Punjab. The other big factor is the high aspirational levels among the youth. When these aspirations are not fulfilled,they turn to drugs. It is a socio-psychological problem,” says Sandhu.

Punjab has seven drug de-addiction centres (each with 10 beds),in addition to a model 50-bed facility in Amritsar. The government is setting up 24 more 10-bed centres and four more 50-bed model facilities in the state.

The 30-bed Swami Vivekananda Drug De-addiction Centre in Amritsar has been packed to capacity ever since it came up a couple of years ago. A 10-day course here costs Rs 3,000 and the staff claim that they have had lots of successes in curing people of their addictions. “Most of our cases are brought by family members. But we have also had a couple of rare cases where an addict walked in for rehab on his own,” says a medical official,not wanting to be named. “Our 10-day course has actually cured a lot of people,” the official claims. “I got hooked onto heroin around six months back. Then my family brought me here. I haven’t had any heroin for the past eight days and will be leaving this place in two days,” says 32-year old Beant Singh.

The Centre has also been getting patients from far-off villages and town s in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. “I used to take capsules. But have finally managed to quit after coming here,” says 33-year old Wazir Singh,from Bijnour. “I got to know of this centre from an acquaintance who also got treated here,” he says.

Though drug peddling and trafficking have struck roots in rural areas,urban areas too are falling prey. Maqboolpura in Amritsar city has been dubbed as a ‘colony of widows’ following revelations that a large number of women living there had lost their husbands to drug abuse. An elderly woman,Mai Dhamo,is said to have lost six of her seven sons to drugs.

“In the past six-seven years,over 150 people have died in Maqboolpura because of drug abuse,” says Master Ajit Singh,a school teacher who runs the Citizens Forum Vidya Mandir,an NGO which is imparting education to 656 children,all of whom are from families who have lost a member to drug abuse.

Raj Kaur lost her husband in December 2007. “He had been a drug addict for years,” she says. She is just one of the many widows in Maqboolpura who have lost their husbands to drug abuse. Ever since her husband’s death,she has been fending for herself and her two children,both of whom go to the school run by Master Ajit Singh.

“Of the 1,000-odd families in Maqboolpur,265 are still affected by drug abuse,” Master Ajit Singh says. “Drugs and liquor still flow freely here.”