Joydeep Narayan Deb
Delving deep into the troubled region of India known as North East is incomplete without shuddering the archaic struggles with narcotics amidst rising socio-political issues. Then often held analytic discussion over narcotics muddle leads only to a certain height traditionally.
The interdependence of narcotics and the people of North East fly back to post independent India or even way further back. Queen’s company legalizing poppy cultivation and handling out opioids to the economically weaker section to overcast the distress of slavery created the practice of consuming narcotics in this region.
Additionally Thailand, Laos and Myanmar popularly known as the golden circle of drugs in Southern Asia tracks back to 16th century. Mass production and distribution of drugs has been a tradition of Vietnam since then. Even in Vietnam War, 95% of the soldiers were buffed with narcotics especially opium and heroin. The reason behind such devastating practice was the mass recruitment of citizens such as farmers in the army.
Surprisingly cocaine-fed noir America was swift enough to grasp the sojourn enhancement led by heroin in the war. Since, then Vietnam never looked back with its production of drugs.
However the golden circle of drugs was incomplete without their exportation of drugs to India, the second largest populated country of the world. About 10 percent of Indians consume several forms of drugs every day. While this widespread traction of drugs consumption in India is tensing another concern arose from the North-Eastern region of India.
Is North Eastern India in the making of another golden triangle of drugs? The North Eastern states Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland has been on the news regarding drugs since a long time. Unfortunately the consequences of this narcotics trafficking has spread to Assam in such a jiffy moment that it has distressed all the officials of the state.
On 19th November, Guwahati Railway Police has seized heroin worth 50 million from Rajdhani Express. According to the IRCTC website, the Rajdhani Express was meant to travel from Dibrugarh to New Delhi. The suspicious stoppages for narcotics smuggling that comes under the route are Dimapur, Diphu and Lumding from which narcotics from Myanmar sneaks to North Eastern India.
On 21st November, Yaba Tablets worth 50 crores were seized in Silchar and on 23rd November drugs worth 13 crore seized in Mizoram-Barak road.
Narcotics worth 680 million were seized in only five days in several parts near Assam or in Assam. The situation has been worsening day by day and all we heard is echoes from the government in power.
The prime pester behind this scenario is to understand the cause of narcotics exploitation in north East and its underlying impact over socio-political upbringing on the region. The colossal damage created by the narcotics has been tugging the region from strolling side by side among the mainland India.
There are certain minor yet destructive causes which we usually overlook while publishing any analytical report of the narcotics uses on this region. There might be a dominant whim for the Rock & Roll lifestyle; there might be the sudden adrenaline rush or any other reasons for the youth to start indulging in narcotics.
All these causes points towards only one direction and that is the rising the classic golden triangle of drugs in North-East India. The question that arose from this impending golden triangle is that how the peddlers are allowed to ship narcotics via Indian railway? The ever developing security and task forces of North-East Frontier Railway must be aware of these large shipments in advance. If that is how we are going to sum up the whole scenario, there might be top officials who are involved in the shipment process. Or if nobody from the railway department is unaware of the narcotics smuggling then it should be the high time to take actions in hand in order to strengthen the task forces and tighten the security.
