Author : Dr. Ratan Sharda
This monograph compiled by Krishna Prasad U is an explosive book that must be read by all the policy makers, educationists and parents, if they wish to see a healthy tomorrow for their children. Youth need to read it to save themselves from a potential hell that looks cool and supportive of a hectic deadline based life, but it is not.
The book has a foreword by Col (Retd) Jaibans Khanna who hails from Punjab and has seen the narcotic war on Bharat from close quarters. His foreword itself rings alarm bells before you even reach the first pages.
It is a slim volume, easy to read and finish quickly. But a book that will force you to rethink your presumptions about narcotics. You think, the problem is at the other side of the street or somewhere out of your social life. It is not. It does not spare rich nor the poor. It is a universal.
The book is and packed with painstaking research and annotated very well. It has shocking revelations about growing mental health issue due to rising drug abuse that threatens to wreck our society from within. As an editor, I would have moved a part of chapter 1 to the end, but that does not detract from the value of the book.
This new war is not being waged on the borders, but from within where there are no big explosions but deadly silence.
It opens with Islamist lobby in Kerala using the drugs not just to weaken the youth, the coming generation of Bharat, at whom we look for demographic dividend. The dividend may become fictious and illusory if the youth has been weakened and hollowed out with drugs. Drug money is used to finance terror activities. So, it is a double whammy. Hindu and Christian youth is targeted by terror outfits with easy availability at low cost initially. Once they are hung on it, they end up as slaves of these groups. Either exhausting their own resources, or parents resources or becoming couriers or part of network marketing to finance their own habits.
It goes on the explain how the new craze for using mild doses to improve wakefulness in the harsh corporate world and start up ecosystem. And how withdrawal is not easy. It needs more drugs. Ultimately deadening the senses. Parents are not able to find out what is going wrong with their ward before it is too late.
Writer brings out research that shows how OTT platform acts as a facilitator by glamourizing drug abuse, though it shows the mandatory warning. The fact remains that they make it so attractive and cool. It presents case studies of bright engineers turning into zombies.
The book shows with evidence that this Narcotics induced war where the weapons are drugs of various hues is multi-dimensional. It shows how orporate leaders from IT & startups are to blame for the rising usage. Drug abuse has picked pace because of indifferent judiciary that fears the human rights lobbies & drug suppliers’ rights than the victims’ lives.
You will be as surprised as I was to know that we had a law that gives death penalty to drug suppliers but you will be shocked to note that UPA government led by Congress diluted the law to n 2011, making it easier for judges to dilute the sentence for drug suppliers, who run their trade easily from jail too.
What we are facing is not just health or medical crises, we are facing a disastrous war against the youth forming 65% of our population. The rate of growth of drug use is one of the highest in the world. Its misuse in corporates is also highest in Bharat.
The writer does not stop at analysing the problem but also offering some solutions. The most important is the role of families. An open family can be a great support system and also a sounding board for the children, and children may discuss their problems within rather than depending on outsiders Society too needs to step up social vigilance. Mothers can form groups and with vigilance find out drug suppliers in their area and name and shame them. An individual cannot fight the cartel, but social groups and mothers as a force can.
As ordinary citizens, what can we do. I would suggest that begin by reading this book. As noted earlier, it is a slim volume that can be read in a couple of sittings. But it will impact you for many days. We need to talk among us, among families and form groups to address this menace. It is not Udta Punjab, it is Sinking Bharat as the writer puts it. A book review does not thank the writer and publisher. But, I think, both publisher and the writer should be thanked for this eye opening research compendium.
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