Working for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), SUBRATA BISWAS functions now as a Senior Special Secretary under the Government of West Bengal at Kolkata. He has extensive experience in anti-narcotics operations and worked earlier as Special Excise Commissioner (Enforcement) at a provincial level and as Zonal Director at Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) at the federal level under the Ministry of Home Affairs (Department of Internal Security), Govt. of India in the eastern region. NCB, being India’s federal nodal agency in drug issues, the nature of his work there exposed him to the complex web of drug trafficking and all the accompanying challenges that unfolded across as many as 13 provinces and Union Territories in the entire eastern and north-eastern part of India, including along the country’s vulnerable international frontiers on the eastern flank. He represented the Narcotics Control Bureau in multiple Indian delegations inside the country as well as abroad that engaged in talks on supply control management of the drug trafficking menace.
On the other hand, SUBRATA has also been working tirelessly towards sensitising the vulnerable segments of the population about the ills of drug abuse, an activity that has always remained frighteningly under-addressed at an institutional level, not just in India but actually globally. In fact, it is this significant under-emphasis on demand side management of the drug menace that drew him increasingly to the possibilities of finding a holistic solution to the scourge of addiction, and he became an active ISSUP member as well. He believes that the world listens with a little more attention when a supply control professional speaks the language of demand control, and his experience so far has only remained truly encouraging in this regard. His passionate engagement with recovery issues and networking also ensured that he became an elected member of the 8-member Steering Committee for the Afro-Asian Recovery Allies Network in 2022.
The Indian Academic Researchers Association, a pan-Indian body of university teachers and researchers, honoured SUBRATA BISWAS with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 for his anti-drug abuse awareness campaign amongst college and university students in the State of West Bengal.
SUBRATA did his Master’s in English literature from Calcutta University and subsequently his Master of Public Affairs (MPA) on a French scholarship from the Institut des Etudes Politiques—Sciences Po, Paris, in 2010 and earned a Magna Cum Laude. Having also done his Bachelor of Laws and Master’s in Criminal Law, he is currently pursuing his PhD in criminal law at a leading national law university in India, where he is studying the role of confirmation bias in the disposal of drug cases. He also gives occasional lectures at law universities and judges’ training academies in India.
SUBRATA has also authored quite a few research papers on socio-legal issues published in distinguished journals both in India and abroad. Between 2018 and 2024, he was also a member of the Nomination Committee of WFAD.