It is hard to imagine — many of us have carried the weight of silence for too long. Illegal poppy cultivation in Manipur is destroying us, shattering families, threatening communities, and stealing futures before they begin. Many young people, who should be building tomorrow, lose themselves to heroin derived from the opium poppies that blanket our hills.
Some cannot imagine life without it. Some choose not to live at all. The rehabilitation centres multiplying across our state tell only part of this tragedy.
I think back to the colony where I grew up in Imphal, and my heart breaks, as so many of our youth, in household after household, were lost to this silent killer. It is like living through a never-ending nightmare.
Yet even in the depths of this nightmare, a voice echoes across the centuries with startling clarity: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19, NIV). These words pierce through our present darkness with urgent truth.
God has never been neutral about our choices. From the beginning, His desire has been unmistakably clear — He chooses life for us, an abundant and flourishing life. The question is whether we will pick it too.
The Creator’s Choice – Life Against the Thief
When Jesus declared, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10, NIV), He affirmed what had always been true about God’s heart. The Creator who breathed life into dust, who knit together each person in their mother’s womb — God delights in life, celebrates it, protects it, and pursues its restoration even when we throw it away.
The contrast could not be starker. Jesus identified the alternative in that verse: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
These words describe exactly what we see in Manipur’s poppy fields. What looks like a crop is a thief, stealing futures before they begin, killing bodies and spirits, destroying families and communities with precision. The opium trade is death disguised as opportunity; ruin masked as prosperity.
When young people in Manipur inject heroin into their veins, they stand at the same crossroads where God has always placed humanity — between life and death, between blessing and curse.
Sowing Death – The True Cost of Poppy Fields
These are not statistics. These are image-bearers of God, created for purpose and dignity, reduced to casualties in a crisis of our own making.
Behind each of these tragedies lies a poppy field. Behind each field lies a farmer who once believed this crop would bring survival, not knowing it would bring death instead — death to forests, death to soil, death to watersheds, and ultimately death to the children who should have inherited a thriving land.
Environmental and human destruction are not separate critical points; they are one. We choose death for the land when we strip the hills of their protective forests to plant poppies. When that land produces opium that becomes heroin, we are choosing death for our youth. The connection is direct, undeniable, and utterly tragic.
The prophet Hosea accurately captured this principle: “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7, NIV). Manipur has sown poppy seeds across its hills, and the whirlwind has arrived — floods that sweep away homes, landslides that bury villages, addiction that consumes a generation, violence that fractures communities. We cannot plant destruction and expect to harvest life.
Hope Returns When We Choose Life
Yet here is where the Gospel disrupts despair. The God who calls us to choose life over death does not leave us to our ruin.
When Jerusalem lay in ruins, He told Isaiah, “They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated” (Isaiah 61:4, NIV). These promises speak directly to Manipur’s present crisis. The years that addiction has eaten, the childhoods consumed by trauma, the potential squandered, the families broken — God promises to repay. The places long devastated, the forests cleared, the hills eroded, the communities fractured — God promises to restore. This is not wishful thinking.
This is the dignity God gives us — the opportunity to partner with Him in choosing life. Each farmer who replaces poppies with honest crops chooses life. Each community that turns away from the drug trade and chooses honest work chooses life. Each family that helps an addicted member find recovery refuses death. Each young person who rejects quick profit or escape through drugs declares that life is worth defending.
This choice is hard for many. Often, poverty is absolute in many cases. Roads and markets are scarce in remote areas or during monsoons. Of course, addiction destroys lives. Yet God’s power to change the impossible is real too. The Bible’s vision of restoration is not blind optimism. It is a steady hope, rooted in God’s faithfulness and lived out through our obedience.
From War on Drugs to War for Life
When Manipur launched its “War on Drugs” in 2018 under the initiative of former chief minister N. Biren Singh, it represented more than policy — it represented a choice for life. When farmers receive support to transition to sustainable alternative crops, they can choose life.
When rehabilitation centres offer hope to people with addiction, they are helping people get back to life. When communities unite to replant forests and restore watersheds, they choose life for future generations.
The Crossroads – Choosing the Life God Still Offers
God has never stopped choosing life for Manipur. God has blessed Manipur with beauty, fertile land, rich forests, and a people of strength. These gifts still remain, even in ruin.
The question is whether we will choose to walk with Him. Mothers who mourn their children deserve to see life return to their homes. Youth trapped in addiction deserve a path to freedom and purpose. Bare hills deserve to be covered once more with forests. Communities torn by violence and loss deserve peace and restoration. All of this is possible, not through human effort alone, but through partnership with the God who declares: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19, NIV).
Manipur stands at a crossroads. One path leads further into the darkness we have known — more death, more destruction, more devastation. The other path leads toward the life God has always intended — restoration of land, healing of communities, freedom for captives, hope for the hopeless.
The choice seems obvious, yet it requires courage to reject the quick rewards of poppy cultivation, patience to build what endures, and faith that a different future is possible.
Will We Choose Life Too?
God has already chosen life for Manipur and committed His power to restoration. The question that remains is the one He has asked since the beginning: Will we choose life, too? The choice is ours — will we choose life for ourselves, our children, and those yet to come? Manipur’s future rests not on policy or power but on a moral decision between life and death, hope and despair, faith and ruin.
Let us choose life so that we do not regret it before it is too late. Would you agree with me if I say, “Let us choose it each day until the ruins are rebuilt, the land is restored, our youth are renewed, and the silence in our homes is filled again with the laughter of children who inherit hope instead of loss?”
I do not support illegal poppy cultivation. I support sustainable alternatives that strengthen society and help affected farmers in Manipur. I stand firmly behind the Manipur Government’s “War on Drugs” campaign.
As a strong, united community, we must work alongside government agencies that are helping farmers abandon illegal poppy farming. We, the people of Manipur, can eliminate unlawful poppy cultivation through collective effort. I call upon the entire Manipur community to unite as one team in this fight against the illegal cultivation of poppy, working together to create sustainable livelihoods and a healthier future for all.
The author is an international development consultant specialising in agriculture, horticulture, and trade facilitation. Views expressed are that of the author and do not reflect EastMojo’s stance on this or any other issue.
You just read a story that took days to report. Help us keep our reporters on the ground in the Northeast.
Ad-free reading, support and keep important stories alive
Support once (any amount)
Scan to pay via UPI