Parvati Valley HP Illegal cannabis and opium cultivation ride high

A girl shows the hand of a cannabis field worker (not in picture) in Malana.

"You want to buy charas? Hashish? Top quality," are invariably the first words you will hear in Malana. The remote Himalayan hamlet lends its name to Malana Cream, acknowledged the world over as the 'champagne of hashish', an intoxicating dark brown resin rubbed off the leaves and seeds of the locally profuse variety of Cannabis sativa-bhang, marijuana or simply weed for the uninitiated.

A girl shows the hand of a cannabis field worker (not in picture) in Malana.

Tucked safely away on the highest mountains fringing Kullu Valley and an hour-and-a-half's walk from the closest road, Malana is, to the estimated 30,000 backpacking tourists, instant precooked nirvana. There are Britons, Israelis, Germans, Italians, Dutch and Japanese, and an even greater number of young Indians who arrive in Kullu each year, the proverbial 'gateway to heaven'. The ancient village traces its origins back to the 'Aryan purity' of Alexander's invading armies (326 BC). Its 1,600 residents believe they are directly descended from the mythical sage Jamdagni (referred to as 'Jamlu' locally) who they believe forbade them from eating, living or marrying outside the community.

Malana is the access point to the rest of the legendary Parvati Valley where entire village communities thrive on illegal cannabis and opium poppy cultivation. Avgal Thach (thach refers to a flat highland), a small mountain village once a resting place for the Gaddi shepherds, now devotes all its arable land to raising high-quality cannabis.

Be warned though that it is a difficult and decidedly perilous 12-hour trek to Avgal Thach along narrow tracks and impossible gradients. Armed guards, mostly Nepalese, hired by local villagers protect the prized cultivation and discourage outsiders from getting too close.

Former Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) superintendent Om Prakash Sharma, 46, has kept a close watch on the burgeoning cannabis cultivation in Himachal Pradesh. Responsible for spearheading an unprecedented campaign against cannabis and opium during his tenure in the state from 2002 to 2007, Sharma says the hash farms have come back like a "cancer". The officer's figures, based on ground checks and regular reports from a wide network of informers in impossible-to-reach Himalayan villages, are virtually unchallenged.

He says residents in nearly 2,500 villages falling within more than 592 panchayats (each hill panchayat could have up to 12 villages) across Kullu, Mandi, Chamba, Kangra, Shimla and Sirmour rely on drug money for their livelihoods.

Himachal Pradesh produces over 60,000 kg of hashish and some 40,000 kg of opium. According to the former narcotics officer, "more than 1,600 hectares of cultivable farmland and an additional 500 hectares of illicitly felled public forests are currently under cannabis". Just six years ago (2007), the area under cannabis was 1,500 hectares and opium poppy covered barely 120 hectares as against 800 hectares at present.

Well-oiled drug syndicates based abroad and always working remotely through agents and backpackers ensure cannabis remains the most lucrative crop for Kullu's villagers. "Parents will often keep children from studying to work in cannabis plantations because the money (up to Rs 1,000 per day) is just so good," says 32-year-old Purshottam (name changed), a Malana resident trying to survive on alternative crops.

Himachal Pradesh's former Director General of Police, I.D. Bhandari, admits some of his men are involved with the cannabis trade. "But it is only at the lowest rungs," he insists. "The difficult terrain is our biggest hurdle," he says.

A man smokes hash in Malana.

Three-time Kullu MP Maheshwar Singh, who quit the bjp to float his own party ahead of the Assembly polls in October-November 2012, is an advocate for legalising cannabis in the state. "Cannabis can be grown for local use and for its medicinal qualities. If Odisha and Rajasthan can legalise production, then why not in Kullu, where the best quality grows wild?" he asked reporters during the election campaign. Singh is known to have called on former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at his summer home in Prini (Manali) in 2003 to press for the legalisation of cannabis cultivation. "But Vajpayee just shooed him away," says a source.

Malana Cream and her heady cousins are shipped out of the state as consignments no more than 5 kg each. The hash could be packed behind fenders, ferreted away in door panels in innocuous cabs, disguised to look like Kullu apples, or packed into jars of jams, jellies and fruity preserves. Anti-drug crusaders are visibly helpless in the face of the economic realities of demand and supply.