Words alone won’t win this war

Surinderjit Singh Sandhu

News reports about drug menace abound. The Punjab CM has claimed in the Assembly that he had kept his word on curbing this scourge, but no one really believes in the seriousness of the government to tackle this fatal epidemic.

In the early 1960s, my friend’s grandfather had contested the election of sarpanch. He had been imprisoned during the freedom struggle and his landed property confiscated by the British. His eldest son had predicted that being so honest, his father was likely to lose the election as he would never agree to distribute liquor among voters. His adversary, on the other hand, was known to assist those indulging in the illicit distillation of liquor. His prophecy came true.

There is a village in Amritsar, associated with the Ramayana period, where after the Sino-Indian war of 1962, a patriotic song would often be heard — ‘Watan ki aabru khatre mein hai’. That village had earned notoriety for illicit distillation and sale of liquor. The playing of the song on a loudspeaker would send a warning signal to bootleggers that the police would — or has — entered the village. It remains the favourite topic of the area!

The state crackdown, however, made big progress and liquor business was ousted, to be slowly replaced by chitta (heroin). In a very notorious district of Punjab, a young and honest SSP, who was a stickler for the rule of law, was transferred at the bidding of a powerful politician. On the day of his transfer, the politician remarked, ‘Changa ho gaya, tabdil ho gaya, nahin taan mainu ede te chitta pawaouna paina si’ (Good for him he got transferred, else I would have had to implicate him in a chitta case).

A long time ago, I was in the state Vidhan Sabha and listening attentively to an interesting reply given by the then health minister. He said his department had raided thousands of chemist shops, seized all unlawful intoxicants and got hundreds of FIRs registered. He was giving minute details and concluded that the department had been able to eliminate intoxicants. The treasury benches gave a thunderous applause to his oratorical skills. However, an independent legislator stood up and said, ‘Speaker sahib, is pavittar sadan vich main eda vadda jhooth kadi nahi sunya. Mere halke ch mere naal chalo, tuhanu main hazaaran nashe vechan wale pharrha dianga (I have never heard such a lie spoken in the House. Come to my area, I will show you thousands selling intoxicants). Sitting in the gallery, most officers smiled at this realistic remark.

In earlier days, the Health Ministry was often asked to answer about drugs. Mostly, the discussions would end with the alibi of shortage of drug inspectors and the filling of vacant posts.

The involvement of national/international level sportsmen-turned-policemen in this trade blew the lid off the magnitude of this menace.

It took two centuries, two Opium Wars and a revolution for China to rid itself of the label of ‘nation of opium eaters’.

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