Jammu and Kashmir stands before a defining test. The region has spent decades battling discord, disturbance and distress. Another threat now presses into villages, schools and homes with alarming force: drug abuse.

This crisis reaches far beyond addiction. Families break under financial pressure. Young people drift away from education and work. Criminal networks tighten their grip on vulnerable communities. 

Every district now tells stories of parents searching for treatment, teachers watching students decline and neighbourhoods losing promising youth to narcotics.

Against this difficult backdrop, a recent operation in Village Vessu in Qazigund gave something rare in public life: proof that determined administration still matters.

Revenue officials in Qazigund launched a field operation to identify and destroy illegal poppy cultivation. Their work may appear modest beside the scale of Jammu and Kashmir’s narcotics problem. Still, the significance of this effort reaches far beyond a single village. 

The operation demonstrated what governance looks like when officials step out of offices and into public service with seriousness and conviction.

The campaign followed repeated calls by Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha to build a completely drug-free Union Territory. Public speeches often fade into routine bureaucracy, but Qazigund told a different story. 

Officials translated political direction into visible action on the ground.

A team that included the Tehsildar, Girdawars, Patwaris, Lumberdars and Chowkidars inspected more than fifty vegetable gardens in Village Vessu. Officials relied on local intelligence and field-level knowledge to identify illegal cultivation hidden among ordinary crops. Wherever poppy........

© Kashmir Observer