India's war on substance abuse found a fresh amplifier on Sunday when Union Coal and Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy highlighted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's spotlight on youth-led anti-drug activism during the 138th episode of Mann Ki Baat. In his post, Kishan Reddy noted that PM Modi expressed appreciation for young Indians who are not merely pledging to stay drug-free themselves, but actively carrying that message outward — to peers, families, and communities. The vehicle driving this energy is the 'Nasha Mukt Yuva Abhiyan', a youth-focused campaign under which millions of participants are channelling their commitment through anthem and slogan-writing competitions, street plays, and digital creative content under the hashtag #NashaMuktYuva.

What Mann Ki Baat's 138th episode said about the movement

PM Modi's monthly radio address — running without interruption since October 2014 — has consistently served as a broadcast window for community-driven social campaigns. The 138th episode's focus on drug abuse puts it squarely in that tradition. By calling out the growing participation of youth volunteers, Modi underscored a shift in the campaign's character: from government-directed messaging to citizen-owned advocacy. Young people are no longer passive recipients of anti-drug outreach; they are its authors and amplifiers.

MY Bharat and the digital spine of Nasha Mukt Yuva Abhiyan

Central to this mobilisation is the MY Bharat platform — short for Meri Yuva Bharat — a government-backed digital hub for youth volunteerism and social-issue campaigns. Through MY Bharat, participants compete in creative formats, document street plays, and push content across social media, giving the Abhiyan a peer-to-peer reach that traditional public-health drives rarely achieve. The campaign traces its institutional roots to the Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyan, launched in August 2020 by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which targeted drug demand reduction in high-prevalence districts across the country.

Why Kishan Reddy's amplification matters

A senior BJP minister and Telangana state president echoing a Mann Ki Baat segment is a deliberate act of political cascading — ensuring the Prime Minister's messaging travels beyond the radio audience into the party's state-level social media ecosystem. Telangana, a state where the BJP has been aggressively building ground presence, is also a region where drug abuse among urban and peri-urban youth has drawn public concern. The amplification signals that the Abhiyan is being positioned as both a welfare initiative and a grassroots connect tool for the party in southern India. The real measure of the campaign will come in Parliament and in published data — participation numbers, pledge counts, and district-level outreach reports. For now, the message from the highest levels of government is unambiguous: India's youth are not just the target of this campaign. They are running it.