Talk:Western Ghats
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Page scope
Western Ghats treats the cannabis growing region in the forested hill tracts of the Western Ghats in Kerala: the 1893 evidence from Malabar, the forest plantations reported from the 1990s, and the raids since 2025. Its growing areas are Idukki and Attappadi. The range as a whole is not the subject of the page.
Data verification
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Discussion
Why the region is mapped
- P. R. J. Pradeep (Down To Earth, 15 April 1994) describes cannabis fields "in the southern parts of the Western Ghats", mostly near the Tamil Nadu–Kerala border, and lists the Idukki region first among the main centres in Kerala.
- Outlook reports several thousand acres of fields in Idukki District ("Guns 'N Ganja") and, in 2005, migrants from Idukki growing it in Attappadi ("Stone Age").
- Raids in Attappadi are reported in 2006, 2016, 2025 and 2026; the Idukki sources run from 1994 to 2017.
Growing status
The status is Active: both growing areas have cultivation reported since 2000 (Attappadi in 2005, 2006, 2016, 2025 and 2026; Idukki in 2016). No source read says that growing in either tract has ended. The 2016 and 2017 statements that cultivation in Idukki had declined are on Talk:Idukki.
How the border is drawn
- The border is the union of the two growing areas: Idukki District (OpenStreetMap administrative relation 1819274) and the Attappadi block panchayat of Palakkad District (OpenStreetMap relation 17950367), simplified, about 5,200 km² in two parts. It is a proxy: the sources report the cultivation by these two tracts.
- The region is drawn on these documented tracts only, not on the whole range.
- Pradeep's other Kerala centres (the Pooyamkutty area, the Chimmini Dam catchment in Thrissur, Agasthyakoodam) and his Tamil Nadu and Coorg tracts rest on that one 1994 article, and are named in the prose but not drawn. The Wynaad of Bradley's 1893 evidence had back-yard plants, not fields, and is not drawn either.
- The map point (10.03, 76.99) is the centre of the drawn area; the border is not drawn from it or from any accession or news point.
Sources
- Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894. Bradley's evidence (Madras witness 14, pp. 183–184) is cited from the page images. The OCR text gives his name as "Herpert Brapuey".
- The Commission's volumes have no evidence from the princely state of Travancore.
- Outlook. The two Outlook articles carry the date of the magazine's 2022 archive migration on their pages, not their issue dates. "Stone Age" is dated to the issue of 26 September 2005 by the date in the path of its photograph; "Guns 'N Ganja" carries no date, and its text reports destruction "between '90 and '97".
Where the sources disagree
- Plants destroyed in 2016. Onmanorama (27 July 2016) reports that the Excise Department's find of 300 plants in Attappadi in 2016 was only the second plantation detected in 15 years. The 2006 raids, in which the Excise Department took part, destroyed some 10,290 plants in Attappadi (UNI, 26 August 2006), and the department's own count of plants destroyed in the state was 823 in 2015–16 (Onmanorama, 26 July 2016). The article reports each figure with its source.