Rahul Gandhi swept into Chandigarh on Thursday and declared that the border state of Punjab has a drug crisis. He said that 7 out of every 10 youths in the state suffered from drug problems â€" a remark that brought swift criticism from several political opponents in the state.
As it turns out, Mr. Gandhi was right and wrong. He was right that Punjab is facing a terrible drug epidemic. But he appears wrong in saying that that 70 percent of the state's youth have drug problems. Nor is he the only one who has been wrong about it. That figure has often been cited in media accounts about the state.
So where did this figure come from, and why do peop le keep repeating it?
The answer can be found with Ranvinder Singh Sandhu, a professor at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar. Last April, while reporting a story on the Punjabi drug crisis, we visited Professor Sandhu and asked him about the widely reported statistic. Merely mentioning the figure frustrated him, since he said his study has been widely misquoted.
Here's what he says happened: in 2007, the governor of Punjab became interested in the drug problem and asked Guru Nanak Dev University to do a study. Mr. Sandhu spent about six months completing the study. His sample group was 600 people from different villages and urban areas in Punjab. Of these respondents, he found that 73 percent were between the ages of 16 to 35 with drug problems.
Sounds familiar, right?
Well, here's the catch: ALL of the 600 people in the survey were drug addicts. Mr. Sandhu selected only drug addicts for his sample group. In doing so, he discovered that 73 percent of them were young people. This, of course, is very different from saying that 73 percent of all Punjabi youth have drug problems. Any studies assessing the overall drug usage rate among youths in the state either haven't yet been done or haven't yet been made public.
Yet, to the professor's dismay, this is how his findings were interpreted in many media outlets after the study was made public. That figure was even cited in a court affidavit, he said.
“I have found that my study is frequently misquoted,†the professor said by telephone on Friday.
Despite the mixup, Mr. Sandhu said Punjab is suffering from a severe drug problem, as young people are becoming addicted to heroin and synthetic drugs. Drugs and alcohol often are often twinned together, and alcoholism is also rampant in the state. Yet Mr. Sandhu noted that the Punjabi government has a vested interest in not tackling that issue: the state has more than 8,000 state liquor shops, open at all hour s, which collect more than $720 million in taxes.
“You can't find a cup of tea in the morning but you can get a bottle,†he told us back in April.
On Friday, Manish Tewari, a Congress Party spokesman, continued to argue that Mr. Gandhi was not incorrect in his remark, and produced a copy of a court order citing the figure. (This is apparently the order that Mr. Sandhu says is inaccurate.)
In fact, three years ago, Mr. Sandhu said leaders of the local Youth Congress approached him. They are part of the party's youth division led nationally by, yes, Rahul Gandhi. They wanted advice on a problem to tackle. He suggested drug addiction among youths. The leaders returned later with news: Mr. Gandhi had approved their involvement in such a project. Mr. Sandhu said he later gave three lectures to leaders of the youth and student wings of the Congress Party.
Still, it seems few people actually get his study right.
