Manipur Felt the Tremors First: Northeast Must Now Fight Drugs as One Region

A drug consignment does not respect State boundaries. Law enforcement cannot afford to be trapped by them. Manipur has already felt the tremors of the drug economy in its most painful form. The State did not merely witness drug abuse among sections of its youth. 

It saw the growth of a larger illegal system involving poppy cultivation, cross border movement, synthetic drugs, local peddling networks, corruption risks, forest destruction, armed protection, and social decay. Drugs entered homes, schools, villages, urban localities, and political conversations. They damaged families, distorted local economies, and placed enormous pressure on policing, administration, and community life.

This is why the War on Drugs launched by former Chief Minister N Biren Singh must be understood in its proper context. It was not a decorative slogan. It was a direct challenge to a deeply rooted and profitable narcotics economy. The original War on Drugs was declared by N Biren Singh on November 3, 2018, as a State-led campaign against drug trafficking, illicit cultivation, and the spread of substance abuse.

After the government returned to office in 2022, the campaign was carried forward in a more intensified form as War on Drugs 2.0. The chronology must be stated carefully. It is not accurate to present April 2022 as a single formal launch date. It is more precise to say that War on Drugs 2.0 gained operational momentum from March-April 2022, after the first Cabinet meeting of the new government resolved to make Manipur drug free and the State strengthened its anti narcotics machinery.

That distinction matters because the campaign was not an isolated event. It became an institutional process involving Cabinet decisions, police operations, anti narcotics enforcement, destruction of poppy cultivation, mapping of illegal cultivation areas, and coordination through State and national mechanisms.

The recent announcement by Nagaland Director General of Police Rupin Sharma that police forces across the northeastern States are finalising a coordinated strategy to crack down on drug trafficking should not be treated as a routine law and order statement. It is an important admission that the narcotics problem in the Northeast has moved beyond the capacity of any one State to fight alone.

Speaking on the sidelines of the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on June 26, Sharma said DGPs and heads of anti-narcotics task forces from the northeastern States had recently met to develop a common strategy against drug trafficking networks. The mechanism, he said, is expected to take concrete shape within about 10 days. His statement is significant because traffickers have long understood the geography of the region better than the agencies meant to stop them. They move across borders, exploit administrative gaps, use difficult terrain, take advantage of weak surveillance, and depend on the slow movement of intelligence between States.

One of the important institutional frameworks in Manipur’s fight against illicit drug trafficking is the Narco Coordination Centre mechanism, commonly known as NCORD. It is a national coordination structure created to improve cooperation between Central and State drug law enforcement agencies and other departments involved in controlling drug trafficking and drug abuse. The Government of India restructured NCORD on July 29, 2019 into a four tier mechanism consisting of the Apex NCORD, Executive NCORD, State NCORD and District NCORD. Its purpose is to ensure coordination, intelligence sharing, follow up of decisions, and joint action against narcotics networks.

For Manipur, NCORD was important because the drug problem was never only a police issue. It involved forests, hill land use, poppy cultivation, border routes, youth addiction, alternative livelihood, financial networks, and organised crime. That is why the State Anti Narcotics Task Force was not merely a police arrangement. It required coordination among police, forest officials, tribal affairs and hills, social welfare, horticulture, remote sensing agencies such as MARSAC, and other departments.

This is also why the reconstitution of Manipur’s Anti Narcotics Task Force in 2022 and again in 2023 was institutionally significant. The task force was intended to bring different departments and agencies onto a single platform for effective coordination and implementation of War on Drugs 2.0 and the wider anti drug campaign. It was also expected to submit regular progress reports and begin ground verification of data provided by the Narcotics Control Bureau.

Every serious anti drug campaign produces resistance. This is true not only in Manipur but in every region where narcotics has become a source of illegal wealth. When a government attempts to destroy poppy fields, seize contraband, disrupt routes, arrest handlers, expose financial networks, and bring enforcement into areas previously treated as politically sensitive, it inevitably confronts vested interests.

Some of these interests are visible. Many are not. Some operate through crime. Others operate through influence, propaganda, ethnic cover, political pressure, or administrative obstruction. A narcotics economy does not remain silent when its routes are blocked and its cultivation base is attacked. It responds through resistance, narrative warfare, pressure networks, and attempts to discredit enforcement itself.

This is where the Manipur experience becomes important for the entire Northeast. N Biren Singh’s War on Drugs placed him in direct confrontation with those who were believed to have benefited, directly or indirectly, from the drug economy. It is reasonable to say that such a campaign created enemies. Those who had gained from illegal cultivation, trafficking, protection networks, and the circulation of narcotics money had every reason to resist a determined crackdown.

The Campaign against drugs was never supposed to be against one community. It was against a criminal economy that had used geography, poverty, instability, weak governance, and border vulnerability to expand.

The figures from satellite imagery gave the campaign a measurable basis. A report based on Manipur Remote Sensing Applications Centre data showed that opium poppy cultivation in Manipur declined by 60 percent during the crop cycle period between 2021 and 2024, falling from 28,599 acres in 2021-22 to 11,288 acres in 2023-24. Such figures do not mean the battle is over. Drug networks can adapt, shift, regenerate, and move into new corridors. But the data indicates that systematic mapping, ground verification, political will, and enforcement can produce visible results.

The tragedy is that the wider Northeast did not respond with the same urgency earlier. Had a strong regional mechanism been institutionalised four or five years ago, Manipur and other northeastern States might have been better placed to prevent the spread and shifting of trafficking routes. It may be unrealistic to say that the entire region would have become free from drug trafficking because the Northeast lies close to one of Asia’s most sensitive narcotics zones. But the scale of movement, the confidence of traffickers, and the vulnerability of local youth could have been reduced.

The new situation confirms this concern. Manipur Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh has stated that after the 2023 crisis in Manipur, drug trafficking routes changed significantly, with a large portion of the trade being diverted through Mizoram, while smaller quantities continued through Moreh, Churachandpur and nearby distribution points. This should concern every State in the region. It shows that when pressure increases in one corridor, traffickers do not disappear. They relocate. They change routes, handlers, storage points, transport methods, and local collaborators.

This is precisely why Rupin Sharma’s call is important. A trafficker moving from Manipur to Nagaland, from Mizoram to Assam, or from Assam to the rest of India must not be able to exploit gaps between police systems. The same person, vehicle, courier, financial account, mobile contact, warehouse, or distribution point should be visible across State boundaries. Intelligence gathered in one State must reach another quickly. Drug seizures must not remain isolated police achievements. They must be converted into network mapping.

The Northeast needs a common anti narcotics grid. This should include shared databases of offenders, courier routes, vehicle numbers, repeat seizure points, suspected warehouses, money trails, cross border handlers, and district level vulnerabilities. It should also include regular DGP level review, joint operations, legal coordination for prosecution, financial investigation, and training for police personnel dealing with narcotics cases.

Surveillance cameras, facial recognition systems, and CCTV networks may help in urban crime prevention. But drug trafficking requires deeper intelligence. It requires understanding of supply chains, ethnic and kinship routes, financial movement, digital communication, border vulnerabilities, and local protection systems. The carrier is often the smallest figure in the chain. The real target must be the organiser, financier, transporter, warehouse keeper, political protector, and kingpin.

The Centre also has an important role. The Narcotics Control Bureau, State police, Assam Rifles, Customs, intelligence agencies, forest departments, financial investigation units, and district administrations must work together. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while chairing the 10th Apex Level NCORD meeting, recently spoke of a national strategy to “detect, disrupt and destroy” the narcotics ecosystem, with emphasis on enforcement, intelligence, precursor and synthetic drug control, demand reduction, rehabilitation, and coordination. That approach is especially relevant for the Northeast.

At the same time, enforcement alone cannot solve the crisis. Both Nagaland DGP Rupin Sharma and Manipur DGP Mukesh Singh have rightly said that the fight against drugs cannot be left to the police alone. This is a crucial point. Police can arrest traffickers, seize drugs, destroy cultivation, and file cases. They cannot alone repair broken families, treat addiction, create youth opportunities, provide alternative livelihoods, or rebuild moral confidence in society.

N Biren Singh’s recent statement on the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking captured this wider dimension. He said Manipur had witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of drugs on families and communities, and that the fight goes beyond enforcement. He linked the mission to dismantling drug networks, eradicating illegal poppy cultivation, securing borders, and creating opportunities for youth to thrive. That formulation is important because a society cannot defeat drugs only by punishing supply. It must also reduce demand.

The youth of the Northeast need work, education, sports, cultural confidence, rehabilitation, counselling, and dignity. A young person without opportunity is vulnerable to addiction. A village without livelihood alternatives is vulnerable to illicit cultivation. A border area without governance becomes vulnerable to traffickers. A police system without coordination becomes vulnerable to manipulation.

This is where the politics of the issue must mature. The War on Drugs should not be reduced to a partisan debate. Nor should it be dismissed because it became politically uncomfortable. Manipur’s experience proves that once narcotics enters the social body, it does not remain a policing issue. It becomes a governance issue, a public health issue, an environmental issue, a youth issue, a border security issue, and eventually a political stability issue.

The Northeast must learn from Manipur, not look away from it. Manipur paid the price of facing the problem early and openly. Its campaign had flaws, controversies, and limitations, as all large enforcement drives do. But it also broke the silence around poppy cultivation and narcotics networks. It brought satellite mapping, inter departmental coordination, anti narcotics task forces, and public debate into the centre of governance. It forced the region to admit that drug trafficking is not a marginal crime but an organised threat.

Rupin Sharma’s proposed regional mechanism should therefore be treated not as a new beginning in isolation, but as the next necessary step in a process that Manipur began with great difficulty. The fight that started in Manipur cannot remain Manipur’s burden. The routes are regional. The networks are regional. The damage is regional. The response must also be regional.

The people of Manipur know what drugs can do to a society. They have seen families collapse, youth destroyed, forests cleared, villages drawn into illegal economies, and politics poisoned by the shadow of narcotics money. If the rest of the Northeast now recognises the urgency, that recognition should be welcomed.

But welcome is not enough. The coming mechanism must produce arrests beyond small carriers, convictions beyond publicity, financial disruption beyond seizures, and rehabilitation beyond speeches. It must go after the chain, not just the courier. It must protect the young, not merely punish the addicted. It must treat drug trafficking as organised crime, not isolated law breaking.

Manipur felt the tremors first. The Northeast must now make sure that the earthquake does not spread.