Talk:Indo-Burman Range
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Page scope
Indo-Burman Range is a Growing Region: a named cultivation region that sits above Growing Areas and below the regional complex and gene pool. It covers the hill ranges of north-east India on the Myanmar and Bangladesh borders, whose growing areas are Patkai Bum (Changlang District, Arunachal Pradesh), the Naga Hills (Nagaland), the Manipur Hills, the Mizo Hills (Mizoram) and the Tripura Hills. The hills of Meghalaya and the Mikir Hills belong to Shillong Plateau, the floor of the Assam valley to Brahmaputra Valley, and the rest of Arunachal Pradesh to Eastern Himalayas. The page was first created as Northeast India, a region drawn on eleven districts of Tripura, Assam, Meghalaya and Manipur; its earlier text is in the page history.
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
- No source read describes the Indo-Burman ranges as a cannabis region in those words. The region groups the hill tracts of the range where sources place cannabis growing:
- Tripura. The Narcotics Control Bureau's annual reports for 2016 and 2017 name Tripura among the states with "illicit cultivation and wild growth of Cannabis in hilly and remote areas"; its charts show cannabis destroyed in Tripura in 2014 (123 acres) and 2016 (431 acres). The state government's written reply to the assembly (Tripurainfo, 17 March 2026) gives 12,479.98 ha destroyed in three years. Press reports name drives in six of the eight districts; they are set out on Talk:Tripura Hills.
- Manipur. Raman's case study of a village in Ukhrul district (Economic and Political Weekly, 2014); The Federal (12 October 2020) lists seven districts; operations in Ukhrul (Eastern Mirror, January 2014) and Pherzawl (ANI, February 2025). Details on Talk:Manipur Hills.
- Nagaland. Plants destroyed at Kiphire (Nagaland Post, August 2017) and near Beisumpuikam, Peren (Morung Express, April 2018); the 2017 statement of the Inspector General of Police (Crime). Details on Talk:Naga Hills.
- Changlang, Arunachal Pradesh. Poppy and cannabis destroyed together on about five hectares at Dirak Pathar and Kumung Pathar, Bordumsa circle (The Arunachal Times, 25 February 2021). Details on Talk:Patkai Bum.
- The range itself is described by Encyclopædia Britannica ("Rakhine Mountains": an arc from Cape Negrais to Manipur that includes the Naga, Chin, Mizo and Patkai hills) and, for the Tripura and Chittagong fold belt, by Hossain and others (Lithosphere, 2022), who call that belt the outer Indo-Burman Ranges.
- Mizoram. No report of cannabis grown in Mizoram since 2000 was found; the reports read are of seizures, and of seized drugs burnt on court orders. The only source naming the Lushai country for cannabis is J. J. S. Driberg's evidence to the Hemp Drugs Commission (1893), which lists it among the hill tracts round the Surma valley and calls all of them "ganja-producing tracts". R. B. McCabe, in the same volume, had never seen the people of the Lushai Hills smoke ganja. On that evidence Mizoram has a short historical growing area, Mizo Hills; details on Talk:Mizo Hills.
How the border is drawn
- The border is a proxy, drawn from OpenStreetMap administrative relations: Changlang District (2027455) and the states of Nagaland (2027973), Manipur (2027869), Mizoram (2029046) and Tripura (2026458). The outline is in two parts, because Tirap and Longding districts of Arunachal Pradesh lie between Changlang and Nagaland, and it measures about 75,400 km², the figure in the infobox.
- The Imphal valley is inside the border, although the Manipur Hills area leaves it out: the valley lies within the ranges, and The Federal (2020) names Imphal East among the cultivating districts.
- Not included: the Barak valley of Assam (Cachar, Hailakandi, Sribhumi) and Dima Hasao, for which no source names cultivation; the hills of Meghalaya and Karbi Anglong (Shillong Plateau); and the parts of the ranges in Myanmar (the Chin Hills, the Naga Hills of Sagaing) and Bangladesh (the Chittagong Hill Tracts), for which no source on cannabis growing has been read.
Where the sources disagree
- Cultivation in Hill Tippera, 1893. The state's memorandum to the Hemp Drugs Commission said that hemp was not cultivated in the state, and the officiating magistrate of Noakhali, N. K. Bose (Vol. IV, Bengal witness no. 25, p. 66), reported the Maharaja's minister as stating that ganja was not grown in the Maharaja's territory "except in a very small quantity". The Commission (Vol. I, paras. 35 and 100) found evidence of "some cultivation", of "the ruder sort". The Bengal excise inspector A. C. Mukerjee (Vol. IV, p. 174) wrote that ganja was "regularly cultivated" in the Maharaja's territories, and G. C. Basak, deputy magistrate at Brahmanbaria (Vol. IV, p. 105), that "a few seers" were grown in the Tippera hills. The article gives the Commission's finding and attributes the witnesses.
- Local cultivation in Nagaland. The Inspector General of Police (Crime) said in June 2017 that local people were turning to cannabis cultivation; a Morung Express editorial of December 2022 said that local cultivation had not been reported in the state. The article gives both, attributed.
Growing status
The status is Active: cannabis is reported destroyed in the region in every year from 2023 to 2026 in Tripura, in Manipur in 2025, in Changlang in 2021 and in Nagaland in 2017 and 2018. No source read says that growing has ended anywhere in the region.
Sources not used
- Parliamentary answers and Press Information Bureau releases with state-wise cannabis figures (sansad.in, mha.gov.in, pib.gov.in) could not be reached. The NCB annual report for 2018 is a scan without a text layer, and those for 2019 and 2020 were too large to fetch.
- No UNODC, INCB or peer-reviewed source on cannabis cultivation across the Indo-Burman ranges as a whole was found.