Talk:Brahmaputra Valley
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Brahmaputra Valley is a Growing Region. It treats cannabis on the valley floor of the Brahmaputra in Assam: the plains districts, their homestead plants and wild stands in the colonial record, and the cultivation destroyed on the river's chars since 2000. The hill districts belong to the Shillong Plateau (Karbi Anglong) and the Barak valley lies outside it. The river islands themselves have their own area, Brahmaputra chars.
Data verification
Check the main page for the sources behind each statement. Discuss the region's extent, its growing areas and the accessions and news items that belong to it here.
Discussion
Why the region is on the map
- The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission's Assam evidence (1893–94) treats the Brahmaputra Valley as one unit. J. J. S. Driberg, the Commissioner of Excise, names its six districts and speaks of "so-called wild ganja, which grows luxuriantly in the plains districts". District officers describe plants kept in homestead gardens and prosecuted (McCabe for every plains district he served in; Gait for Kamrup; Gordon for Goalpara), illicit cultivation in Golaghat and around Dibrugarh (Luttman-Johnson), and the Miris of Lakhimpur and Darrang fencing in the wild plant for sale (Anderson).
- Since 2000: cannabis destroyed on three chars in Goalpara (December 2021), on a sandbar in Nalbari (January 2022) and at Panikhaiti, Boko, Kamrup (December 2024); the Chief Minister's figure of 31 bighas destroyed statewide in May to July 2021; the Narcotics Control Bureau's 2 acres for Assam in 2016.
- Whether Anderson's "Miris, a hill tribe in Lakhimpur" are the Miris of the hills beyond the frontier (in today's Arunachal Pradesh) or the plains Miris (the Mising) is not clear from the passage; the article says only "the Miris".
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy: the state of Assam less the hill districts (Karbi Anglong, West Karbi Anglong, Dima Hasao) and the Barak valley districts (Cachar, Hailakandi, Sribhumi), from the OpenStreetMap administrative relations, about 56,300 km². It covers the whole valley floor, on the colonial evidence that the plant was found in every plains district, not only the districts with a report since 2000.
- The three char reports since 2000 all fall in the lower valley (Goalpara, Kamrup, Nalbari). No report found for the upper valley districts since 2000 names cannabis grown; searches found seizures only.
Growing status
The status is Active: cannabis is reported grown and destroyed in Goalpara (2021), Nalbari (2022) and Kamrup (2024). No source read says that growing in the valley has ended.
Sources read and not used
- The large crackdowns on the chars since 2020 are on opium poppy, not cannabis: 170 bighas in the char areas of Goalpara (January 2025), Char Paikarkandi in South Salmara-Mankachar (2020), Bhatnapaity Char in Barpeta (2024).
- An Assam Tribune report quoting police records names Bongaigaon, South Salmara and Chirang for cannabis and poppy destroyed together, about 69 bighas, without dividing the crops; its year is not printed.
- W. W. Hunter's Statistical Account of Assam (1879) lists "son (hemp)" among the fibre crops of Goalpara and hemp among the crops of Kamrup. Son is very probably sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea), which trade returns of the time also called hemp, so these lines are not used for cannabis.