What is already there
Peer led work has its own line in the national scheme.
Community based Peer Led Intervention is one of the four things the National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction pays voluntary organisations to run, alongside residential centres, drop in centres and district de-addiction centres.
The campaign is already built out of volunteers.
Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan runs on youth clubs, Yuva Mandals, NYKS and NSS volunteers, and on Anganwadi and ASHA workers and women's self help groups. It has been in every district of the country since 15 August 2023. The structure to hold a peer is standing. What is handed to that peer is usually a pamphlet.
What is missing
A man who has come through is given a badge and a slogan. He is not given a practice he can lead, in order, with a beginning and an end, that does not require him to be a teacher of anything.
What to do first
Take two men, not twenty.
The ten minute practices are built to be led by somebody who has done them. One group, one pass, nothing repeated, ending on a hum. He does not have to explain any of it.
Lead from inside the line, not from the front.
He practises with them. The difference between a man leading and a man instructing is the difference between this working and this being one more person telling him what to do.
Say the true thing about yourself, once.
Not a testimony and not a triumph. That he is still here, and that today that is the whole of it. Every man in that line has been lied to by somebody who was cured.
रेत पर नौ घर · nine houses in the sand
On the site a man walks nine lamps, one for each feeling, and every road reaches the centre: the garland. This is the same garland in the sand, without a phone, for the courtyard and the peer group. It costs nothing and needs no reading. Every man in the circle has already lived all nine feelings; this may be the first time he is shown that each one is a road.
How to draw it
- With a stick, draw nine squares in the sand, three rows of three, each about a stride across.
- The centre square is शान्त, śānta. It stays empty until a man ends his walk there.
- Name each square aloud once as you draw it, in its place in the picture. Nothing needs to be written.
How to hold it
- Everyone stands round the outside of the squares. The first time, you go first, and you walk it like anyone else.
- A man steps into any square he likes. There he gives that feeling a body, a breath and a sound. No words, and no story.
- The circle answers him: the same breath and the same sound, all together, from outside the squares.
- If a road leads on from that square, he takes the one step along it and gives the next feeling its body. From there he steps into the centre.
- In the centre he stands still and lets one long breath go out. The circle lets it out with him, in silence. His walk is complete.
- Then the next man. A man who only stands at the edge and breathes with the others has taken part.
What never to say
- “Why?”
- Nobody is asked what made him angry or afraid. The body, the breath and the sound are enough, and the story stays his.
- “Good”, or “not like that”
- There is no right way to stand in a square, so there is nothing to praise and nothing to correct.
- “That one is the bad one”
- No square is the wrong road. In the Bhāgavatam (7.1.31 to 32) people came to the Lord by fear, by hatred and by desire, as others came by devotion.
- “Come on, your turn”
- Nobody is made to step in.
Where this comes from
Nine squares on the floor, one for each rasa, with śānta the empty centre: Richard Schechner’s Rasaboxes, an actors’ training (“Rasaesthetics”, TDR 45.3, 2001, pp. 27 to 50), taken here as a practice, not as evidence. The roads are Bharata’s, Nāṭyaśāstra VI.38 to 41. In the sand of a Thar courtyard, led by a man who has come through, the rest is ours.
What to write down
How many came back the second week. That single number is worth more than anything he could be asked to fill in.
Two men practising in a courtyard is where a village health centre can be shown something that already works. That is the next rung, and it is the one where the money is.
Where each of these comes from
- National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, in force from 1 April 2018. Grants to States and to voluntary organisations for Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts, Community based Peer Led Interventions, Outreach and Drop In Centres, and District De-Addiction Centres, which carry what the first three carry together. socialjustice.gov.in
- Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, launched 15 August 2020 in 372 districts and extended to every district of the country on 15 August 2023. nmba.dosje.gov.in