BEHIND EVERY poppy field in Manipur’s hills is a family trapped between hunger and survival. For poor farmers, growing opium is not about morality or crime at all. Unfortunately, it is the only way to feed their children and keep them in school. Yet this lifeline comes wrapped in fear: the threat of raids, the weight of debt, and the quiet shame of knowing that today’s survival steals tomorrow’s future.
I know this struggle intimately. Even though I was born and raised in Imphal, I have close-knit roots from these hills, where farmers live hand to mouth. Here, the question is not whether to break the law, but whether to let your family starve while obeying it.
I understand the dilemma faced by poor farmers in Manipur. Many plants, such as poppies, do not grow out of greed, but to survive. Growing this crop is not something to be proud of. It brings guilt and regret. Some do it for personal gain or to fund illegal activities/conflicts, and their motives are hard to defend. But many others are trapped in absolute poverty, with no other way to feed their families. Here I want to focus on them – the genuine poor farmers who need support to break free from this opium poppy bondage.
The Impossible Geography of Poverty
Life in Manipur’s hill districts, where opium poppy is heavily grown, is shaped by terrain that resists prosperity. Fields are scattered across mountainsides. The soil is weak, barely sustaining maize or rice in quantities that matter. Even when a decent harvest from the land persuades farmers, their problems have only begun.
Roads crumble under monsoon rains, transforming into impassable rivers of mud that isolate entire villages for weeks. Markets lie hours away, transport costs consume profits, and intermediaries exploit every gap in between. Vegetables rot/deteriorate in quality before reaching buyers. Traders avoid these remote villages entirely as the journey costs more than the produce is worth.
Then there is opium, which thrives where other crops fail, requiring little care and less water than rice or maize. It needs no roads, no cold storage, no government support. Most crucially, it is light to carry and concentrated in value. Buyers arrive at the village with cash in hand, asking no questions. For a family teetering on the edge of destitution, the arithmetic is brutal but clear: plant legal crops and watch your children go hungry, or plant poppy and survive another season.
The Human Mathematics of Desperation
Behind every poppy field, impossible calculations are being made. A mother weighs the cost of school fees against the risk of arrest. A father counts the days until harvest while watching his children’s ribs show through their shirts. Opium money pays for rice, medicines, and the books that keep a child in school one more year.
“Hunger is worse than the law,” mothers tell me, and I cannot argue with them. Fathers know that a single raid can destroy everything, yet they plant poppy again each season because their children cannot eat promises or policy papers.
Children as young as ten work these fields. Not because parents are cruel, but because survival demands every available hand. Education becomes a luxury when labour is essential. A boy who should be reading carries water to poppy plants instead. A girl who dreams of nursing school learns the rhythms of harvest rather than homework.
Fear saturates daily life. Police raids can arrive without warning. Debt collectors enforce repayment with violence. Armed groups demand their share of the harvest. Yet these farmers carry no sense of being criminals – only the quiet certainty that they are doing what parents must do.
Opinion | Breaking Poppy’s Bondage by Choosing Life and Stewardship
The Three Chains
Three forces bind families to this crop, each reinforcing the others in a trap with no visible exit.
Broken infrastructure strangles every alternative. Poor roads mean perishable crops cannot reach markets. Buyers will not venture into areas where the journey costs more than the product. Poppy, compact and valuable, sidesteps this entirely – traffickers come to the doorstep.
Debt traps turn temporary hardship into permanent bondage. Families borrow from moneylenders to cover school fees, medical bills, or simply food. Interest rates are crushing. Repayment is demanded in kind, not in cash. Once caught, switching to legal crops becomes impossible – the debt must be serviced, and only opium generates enough income. These debts pass from parents to children, chaining generations.
Conflict and insecurity complete the encirclement. Armed groups control trade routes in the hills, taxing farmers or buying poppy at artificially low prices. Government development programs rarely reach conflict zones, leaving a vacuum that traffickers fill with ready cash and guaranteed purchases. Families find themselves dependent not just on the crop, but on the very networks that exploit them.
Together, these three forces create a cycle that regenerates itself. Poverty becomes hereditary.
When Punishment Replaces Policy
The state’s response is often destruction. Fields are raided, crops are destroyed, and farmers could be arrested. In theory, this reduces drug production. In practice, it deepens desperation.
I have witnessed about the consequences that families suffered from destroyed crops, sobbing at a year’s labour reduced to nothing. With no income and rising debts, they face starvation. The following season, they plant poppy again, because punishment without alternatives changes nothing except making low-income families poorer and more desperate.
This approach fails to grasp a fundamental truth: these farmers are not choosing crime over law. They are choosing survival over starvation. Destroying their fields without providing viable alternatives resets the cycle at a lower, more desperate level.
What Breaking Free Requires
The farmers themselves are clear about what they need. The solutions are neither mysterious nor complicated, as they require sustained commitment and investment.
All-weather roads are the foundation. Without reliable connectivity to markets, no legal crop can compete with poppy’s advantages. Roads must reach the remotest villages and remain passable throughout the year, and of course, be of good quality that can endure. In line with this, a report by India Today NE (October 1,1, 2025) quotes former Chief Minister N. Biren Singh as emphasising that construction in Manipur’s hill areas requires genuine quality investment.
Storage and transport infrastructure can transform agricultural economics overnight. Cold storage facilities and affordable transport services would allow ginger, turmeric, and vegetables to reach urban markets in good condition, fetching prices that make switching worthwhile.
Fair credit systems must replace predatory moneylenders. Rural banks and cooperatives need to provide loans at reasonable rates, breaking the debt trap that forces families to return to poppy cultivation each season.
Comprehensive development programs must prioritise conflict-affected areas, rather than avoiding them. Farmers require training in alternative crops, access to high-quality seeds, and secure market linkages.
On the Right Path
To reflect on the positive activities, the Sangai Express (Epao, 28 April 2025) reported that Mr. K. Debadutta Sharma, Director of Horticulture and Soil Conservation, stated that a cold storage unit has been established under the state plan scheme in Churachandpur district, an area known for poppy cultivation. Additional facilities may already exist or be in pipeline to help genuine farmers transition away from dependence on poppy cultivation.
A Question of Dignity
These families are not asking for charity or special treatment. They want what any parent wants: the ability to feed their children without fear, to send them to school without shame, to build a future that does not depend on breaking the law. They are ready to leave poppy cultivation behind. They have been prepared. What they cannot do is leap alone, unsupported, into a void where legal crops rot in fields and debts compound daily.
The question facing Manipur and India is not whether these farmers will stop growing opium. The question is whether we will provide them with real alternatives or continue punishing them for surviving the only way they can. Behind every poppy field is a family making impossible calculations. Until we change the mathematics of their survival, the fields will remain as it is, or even worse.
Opium farming in Manipur is not driven solely by greed, but by the need to sustain a livelihood. Hunger is the driving force for the farmer’s decision. Imagine, when a ten-year-old works in a poppy field instead of learning in school, as a community, we are all accountable. Another generation is lost. The blame lies with the community that gave him no choice.
As Nelson Mandela said, “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.”
(The views expressed are personal. The author can be reached at chongboi4community@gmail.com. She was the founding Convenor of Thadou Community International and the Convenor of the First State Level Assam Thadou Hun 2025)