After much controversy, Udta Punjab opened to audience on Friday morning, and unlike the censor board’s earlier claims, the film doesn’t glorify substance abuse.
Instead, the film has its heart in the right place: Punjab is in the grip of drugs, and only its youth can unchain it.
What may look like an indigenous version of the hugely popular American series Breaking Bad, it circles around a group of people who operate on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. They are the ones ensuring a constant drug supply in the wheat bowl of India. Protected by the high and mighty in politics, it’s hard to pinpoint anyone. At its current scale, the onus is on nobody to contain the menace.