A people's war against narcotics is underway in Assam's Bodoland Territorial Region — and its newest front-line soldiers are women. Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, hailed a mass mobilisation in Kokrajhar where more than 1.05 lakh Self Help Groups and village organisations have sounded what he called a shankhnada — a conch-shell call to arms — against the drug menace. Posting under the hashtag #AssamAgainstDrugs, the Chief Minister declared: 'The fight against DRUGS is no longer just the government's fight — it is the fight of every single person.' The framing was deliberate: this is not a police bulletin, it is a social uprising.

Kokrajhar as the flashpoint

Kokrajhar, the administrative heart of the Bodoland Territorial Region, has long sat at the crossroads of Assam's security challenges. Synthetic drugs and opiates have filtered into the Northeast through porous international borders, and districts like Kokrajhar — with young populations and a history of conflict — have been among the most exposed. The mobilisation of women's SHGs here is therefore not incidental. It is strategic: these networks already thread through villages that formal law enforcement struggles to reach.

SHGs as the state's social nervous system

Since the BJP government took office in Assam in 2016 and accelerated under Chief Minister Sarma from 2021, Self Help Groups have been steadily repositioned — from purely economic units into vehicles for social campaigns. The anti-drug push is the sharpest expression of that shift yet. With over 1.05 lakh groups in a single district reportedly joining the movement, the state is essentially converting its rural women's network into a community surveillance and awareness grid. This sits alongside intensified enforcement: since 2021, the Assam government has ramped up operations against drug trafficking networks and poppy cultivation under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, logging thousands of arrests and large seizures. But enforcement alone cannot win a border-state drug crisis. The Kokrajhar model signals a bet that community ownership — jan-jan ki ladai, a fight belonging to every person — is what converts short-term crackdowns into lasting change.

The message beyond Kokrajhar

Sarma explicitly framed the Kokrajhar mobilisation as 'a powerful message for all of Assam.' The political implication is clear: the government intends to hold this moment up as a replicable template. Whether other districts with active SHG networks — Barpeta, Dhubri, Cachar — follow with similar mass gatherings, and whether the state formalises linkages with central de-addiction schemes or SHG capacity-building funds, will determine if Kokrajhar remains a headline or becomes a blueprint. When more than a lakh women's groups in one district collectively pledge to fight narcotics, the government's anti-drug campaign stops being a policy document and starts being a movement — and that is a very different kind of power.