Chandigar

Chandigar

Tomorrow I leave for Chandigar, the capital of the state of Punjab (and Hariana). Some of us are going to meet with the head of medical services for the state and perhaps the governor as well, to talk about the future of the program. They keep saying that they have 1 billion people in India and millions of addicts. We are working with less than 20 of them. How are we going to make a dent in the problem. Should be an interesting meeting.
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Ahh! Back from Chandigar. Five hours on the road. It could have been worse. Nice stop at a roadside restaurant, about a dollar for a yummy meal. There are bumper cars and video games outside, very upscale place. It has a big cargo truck that comes through the wall (a decoration, not real, but full size with a driver mannequin.)

We stayed at Dr. Ajit’s house, spacious, pretty, comfortable. He was a gracious host, knows all the good restaurants, makes great desserts and he gets HBO!

Chandigar is a completely planned city. It didn’t exist until the 1950’s. After partition, (breaking off Pakistan from India, after the British left, after WWII), The Punjab no longer had a capital. A European architect was hired to design a new state capital (The original architect died before starting the project. It was designed by a Frenchman, Le Corbousier, a very famous architect.) It is unlike any other city in India; spacious boulevards, lots of parks and greenery; no animals roaming the streets; less crowded, noisy, etc, etc.

We had a good meeting with the head of the medical system in the state of Punjab. They are pleased with our program and want us to train their doctors (teams who can implement the program in all areas of the Punjab. We want to include graduates of our current program. They want to get this program into the villages where there is a huge problem of not only drug addiction, but suicide, increasing poverty (hard to imagine it increasing, but as in the US, the rich are getting richer, etc, etc), hopelessness and despair. As Western marketing and products penetrate more deeply into the culture here, traditional values are breaking down and with that, meaning for life is lost (or at best is in a serious transition.) That combined with easy access to cheap drugs (the Afghan border is not that far from Punjab. Afghanistan’s #1 export since the US invasion is heroin, known locally as Smack and smoked. Most of the drugs abused here, after alcohol is pharmaceuticals – barbiturates; 1 rupee per pill & Norphine, a synthetic morphine, injected – AIDS anyone?) and reported corruption at every level.

We have another meeting scheduled in 10 days (They will come to Amritsar.) There are lots of details to work out, but each step has been an interesting project; designing the training will be as well. The government officials all seem sincere in their desire to address the problems. The medical professionals in government seem to understand addiction and appreciate our holistic (and comprehensive) approach. Currently there are many de-tox centers, but few treatment programs and none that are as comprehensive as ours. They acknowledge that we have been learning from each other.