Aid to the Church in Need: India: From Bamboo huts to Class C drugs

India: From Bamboo huts to Class C drugs

Posted by Press release on 2/9/2008, 9:53 am
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ACN News, Tuesday, 2nd September 2008

INDIA: From Bamboo huts to Class C drugs

Warning of youth drugs crisis in the region that developed too fast

By John Pontifex

A YOUTH drugs crisis now overshadows a corner of north-east India where less than a century ago people were still living in huts and worshiping idols.
The warning, from Bishop Stephen Rotluanga of Aizawl, close to the border with Burma (Myanmar) and Bangladesh, comes amid statistics showing that up to one in three young people are affected by drug abuse.
Other figures quoted by the bishop state that in the capital, also named Aizawl, there are now 20 drug rehabilitation centres.
In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, the charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, Bishop Rotluanga blamed the crisis on marriage breakdown, the impact of the global media and a decline in traditional values.
He spoke of the “brittle” development of society, which is now unrecognisable compared to the situation before the First World War when people were still animist in their beliefs and lived in bamboo huts.
The region is very different from other parts of north-east India, which remain very deprived and under-developed and where far from grappling with youth drug problems, people are struggling with extreme poverty.
Bishop Rotluanga said: “In my part of India, young people, who can afford to, take painkillers, cannabis, cheap types of adhesive which they inhale, cough syrup – anything that can alter their state of mind.
“In some instances, due to substance abuse and misuse of needles, doctors dealing with the problem have to amputate limbs etc.”
Key to the problem, he said, is high unemployment which creates huge frustration in a region which has the second highest literacy levels across India, ranking only behind Kerala in the south-west.

Bishop Stephen Rotluanga of Aizawl, north-east India

The bishop said the economy is now stagnant, a far cry from the fast development that took place early last century, partly thanks to Protestant missionaries who entered the region during the British rule of India, ending in 1947.
Stating that the local economy was more than 90 percent dependant on central government, he said: “Although we have no destitution, we have very few sources of income. There is no industry.”
He added: “Given all these problems, people want to get out of the area but don’t have the money to do so. Instead, they turn to drugs.”
The bishop said that people’s religious values were very weak despite the fact that Mizo Ram, one of the two regions that make up the diocese, is nearly 100 percent Christian.
More than six years into the post, Bishop Rotluanga said the priority was social action to deter young people away from drug abuse and vocational training to improve their job prospects.
He said deepening the people’s religious faith was also a vital means of confronting drugs and other problems and he went on to thank Aid to the Church in Need for its help over many years.
The charity helps with a number of programmes including new centres for missionary work by catechists. A new church and presbytery were recently built, with help from ACN.
With 25 parishes, 50 priests and more than 170 religious, the bishop said the Aizawl diocese was growing but was still very small with only 30,000 faithful in a population of more than four million.
India, with its 23 million Christians (of which 18 million are Catholics), is a priority country for Aid to the Church in Need. In 2007, the charity paid out more than $5.1 million in aid to India.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Sydney office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org