KAZIKOT VILLAGE, India — In this village not far from the Pakistani border, the wheat harvest is only days away. Water buffaloes are resting in the shade. Farmers are preparing their fields. And drug addicts like Pargat Singh are crouched in the shadows, injecting themselves with cocktails of synthetic drugs.
Last Thursday, just after 11 a.m., Mr. Singh followed another man into a dark corner of a decrepit building favored by the roughly 50 addicts in this village. Cracked prescription bottles littered the ground. The other man jabbed a syringe into his arm and injected a blend of prescription drugs that delivers a six-hour high.
“Save some for me,” said Mr. Singh, who is H.I.V. positive and stricken with tuberculosis. He told a photographer: “Shoot my picture. Make me famous.”
Throughout the border state of Punjab, whether in villages or cities, drugs have become a scourge. Opium is prevalent, refined as heroin or other illegal substances. Schoolboys sometimes eat small black balls of opium paste, with tea, before classes. Synthetic drugs are popular among those too poor to afford heroin.
The scale of the problem, if impossible to quantify precisely, is undeniably immense and worrisome. India has one of the world’s youngest populations, a factor that is expected to power future economic growth, yet Punjab is already a reminder of the demographic risks of a glut of young people. An overwhelming majority of addicts are between the ages of 15 and 35, according to one study, with many of them unemployed and frustrated by unmet expectations.
