Curbing Social Evils Requires Social Reform, Not Moral Lectures

Credit By: DR AFTAB SHAMS

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• 29 Apr 2026

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A healthier society is not built merely by condemning vice. It is built by reducing the conditions that breed it

Every society carries within it certain wounds that do not always bleed in public, yet continue to weaken its moral and social fabric from within. These are what we often call social evils, not because they are abstract sins floating above society, but because they are deeply embedded in the way society is organised, tolerated and reproduced.

Drug abuse, domestic violence, dowry, corruption, crime, gender discrimination, unemployment-driven frustration and the erosion of community responsibility are not isolated acts of individual failure. They are symptoms of a deeper social disorder. If we are serious about curbing social evils, we must stop viewing them merely as issues of personal morality and begin understanding them as sociological problems rooted in inequality, alienation, broken institutions and changing social values.

That distinction is important. A society that treats every social problem only through sermons and slogans will never solve it. It may condemn the addict, shame the victim, criminalise the offender and moralise on youth behaviour, but it will still fail to ask the harder question: what kind of social environment produces these patterns in the first place? A sociological perspective does not excuse wrongdoing. Rather, it helps us understand why harmful practices persist despite laws, awareness campaigns and repeated public outrage.

Take the question of drug abuse, which has emerged as one of the gravest social concerns in Jammu and Kashmir. What was once whispered about as an isolated problem has now become a visible public crisis. Recent estimates indicate that around 4–5 percent of Jammu and Kashmir’s population uses opioids, with many users beginning between the ages of 11 and 20. Government figures reported in early 2026 showed that more than 32,000 drug abuse patients had been registered in de-addiction facilities across Jammu and Kashmir. These are not just numbers. They point to a generation under severe social and psychological strain.

To understand this crisis, one has to look beyond the individual and into the structure of everyday life. A young person does not wake up in isolation and suddenly drift toward addiction. Drug abuse often grows in the space created by unemployment, hopelessness, family breakdown, peer pressure, emotional distress and a lack of meaningful opportunities.

In Kashmir, these factors are intensified by a long history of uncertainty, interrupted normalcy and social anxiety. When young people do not see clear pathways to dignity, livelihood and belonging, many become vulnerable to self-destructive escapes. Sociology has long taught us that when social institutions fail to integrate individuals into purposeful roles, deviance often fills the vacuum.

This is where unemployment becomes more than an economic statistic. It becomes a social force. In Jammu and Kashmir, unemployment among youth continues to be described as a defining challenge. Educated frustration is often more dangerous than illiteracy because it creates expectations without fulfilment. When years of schooling do not lead to economic security or social mobility, the result is not just disappointment but alienation. A society that produces educated yet directionless youth should not be surprised if frustration begins to surface in the form of addiction, anger, crime or withdrawal.

But social evils are not limited to drugs alone. The condition of women remains another decisive measure of the health of a society. Across India, domestic violence and dowry continue to expose the cruelty hidden inside many homes. In 2022, over 6,400 dowry deaths were recorded in India, roughly 18 women every day. Domestic cruelty by husband or relatives remains among the top categories of crimes against women. These figures reveal not just criminality, but a social order in which patriarchy still enjoys cultural protection.

Dowry is often described as a custom, but in reality, it is a deeply exploitative social institution. It survives because marriage is still treated in many places not as a partnership between equals, but as an exchange structured by status, family pressure and material expectation. Similarly, domestic violence is not sustained only by the violent individual. It is sustained by silence, social stigma, economic dependence and a culture that too often asks women to endure rather than resist. Laws exist, but law alone cannot defeat a mindset that normalises male entitlement and female suffering.

A sociological view helps us see that these social evils are interconnected. Drug abuse, gender violence, crime and corruption do not emerge from separate universes. They often feed each other through the same underlying conditions: inequality, weak accountability, social fragmentation and declining trust in institutions. When family bonds weaken, schools fail to guide, communities stop intervening, and public institutions lose moral authority, and harmful behaviour gains more space to grow.

This is why the answer cannot lie in punishment alone. Punishment may be necessary, but prevention is always wiser than reaction. And prevention begins with rebuilding the institutions that shape human behaviour.

The family is the first of these institutions. It is within the family that values are first transmitted, emotions first managed, and patterns of authority first learned. A child raised in violence may normalise violence. A young person raised without emotional support may seek belonging elsewhere, even in destructive company. Families must therefore become sites of dialogue rather than fear, of guidance rather than command. Parents cannot remain absent from the emotional worlds of their children and then express shock when those children fall into dangerous patterns.

At the same time, families must confront their own complicity in social evils — whether through gender discrimination, dowry expectations, silence around abuse or obsession with social status.

The second institution is education. If our schools and colleges only produce degree-holders and not socially responsible citizens, then they are failing in a larger mission. Education must do more than prepare students for examinations. It must prepare them for society.

That means building awareness about gender equality, mental health, legal rights, substance abuse, digital misinformation and ethical citizenship. It also means creating spaces where students can speak openly about anxiety, social pressure and identity crises. Recent local initiatives in educational institutions in Srinagar that focus on drug de-addiction and mental health awareness point in the right direction. Such efforts must not remain symbolic events; they should become central to the educational environment.

The third institution is the community. Traditional communities once exercised a degree of informal social control. They intervened, mediated, corrected and supported. Today, however, many communities are becoming socially thinner even while remaining physically crowded. People live side by side yet remain detached from one another’s moral realities. This decline in community responsibility has made it easier for addiction, violence and exploitation to hide in plain sight. Rebuilding community networks — through mohalla committees, youth groups, women’s collectives, religious forums and local counselling spaces — can help restore support systems that prevent social breakdown.

In Jammu and Kashmir, community outreach and awareness campaigns have increasingly been recognised as necessary in confronting the drug crisis. This approach should be expanded to other social evils as well. Religious leaders, civil society members, teachers, doctors and local elders must speak in a united voice against dowry, domestic abuse, addiction and social apathy. Social reform succeeds when it moves from policy documents into everyday conversation.

There is also a need to rethink masculinity. Many of our social evils are tied to distorted notions of what it means to be a man. Dominance is celebrated, emotional vulnerability is mocked, aggression is excused, and control over women is often normalised. Such attitudes create men who are socially insecure yet culturally empowered. Any serious effort to curb social evils must therefore include a transformation in how boys are raised and how male identity is shaped. Respect, restraint and responsibility must become markers of strength.

Equally important is the role of the youth themselves. Young people should not be seen only as victims of social decline; they can also be the strongest agents of renewal. They have the energy to question harmful traditions, the reach to spread alternative values and the imagination to create new forms of solidarity. Youth-led campaigns against drug abuse, domestic violence, dowry and cyber exploitation can have a powerful effect, especially when supported by schools, universities and local media. Social change becomes more durable when the younger generation begins to reject inherited injustices instead of quietly reproducing them.

The media, too, has a special responsibility. It must do more than report shocking incidents after they occur. It should investigate social patterns, highlight preventive initiatives, amplify expert voices and challenge the normalisation of harmful practices. Public discourse must move from sensationalism to serious social reflection.

Ultimately, curbing social evils requires a shift in public thinking. We cannot keep treating symptoms while ignoring causes. We cannot praise progress in one breath and tolerate social cruelty in the next. Nor can we hope that legislation alone will transform a society whose habits remain unchanged. Real reform demands patient work across institutions — family, school, community, law, media and economy.

A healthier society is not built merely by condemning vice. It is built by reducing the conditions that breed it. If we want fewer addicts, we must build hope. If we want less violence against women, we must challenge patriarchy at home. If we want less corruption and crime, we must create fairness and accountability. And if we want social evils to recede, we must recover the collective courage to confront not just the offender, but the social order that enables the offence.

That is the real sociological lesson: social evils endure when society learns to live with them. They decline only when society decides that silence is no longer acceptable. The task before us, then, is not simply to preach goodness, but to create the social conditions in which goodness becomes easier to practice, and injustice harder to sustain.

(The Author is an assistant professor in HED)