Rags to riches: How a miracle crop is making tribals millionaires

Liponi Gomango is from the Sora community, a tribe largely concentrated in Odisha’s Gajapathi district, about five hours from Bhubaneswar. Back then, many tribals and Dalits in the region lived in abject poverty. A lot of them still do but not the Gomangos. They turned rupee millionaires. In the past four years, they made more than ₹1 lakh nearly every month—until October 2022.

Gomango has tons of new outfits and sandals. Her three children attend elite boarding institutions. The mud hut she moved into after her marriage has given way to a five-room house— with concrete walls, granite floors, ceiling fans and tiled toilets. The family got a Bolero, a sports utility vehicle (SUV).

Their neighbours and friends have gotten wealthy too. Visitors to the village, Mohana, are now treated not with water, but Coke.

What explains the shift? The transformation has little to do with any government planning. A large number of people, including the Gomango family, opted to live outside the law. They bet their family’s fortunes on a crop that many people here regard as godsend: cannabis or ganja. The dried leaves, flowers, stems, and seeds from the plant, called marijuana (and popularly as weed), is one of the most commonly used illegal substances in India and elsewhere.

Across the tribal belts of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, tens of thousands of people have turned to cannabis cultivation. Many of them grow the plant out of pure economic necessity, even as some of them don’t smoke weed themselves.

“My husband was taught by a friend about how to enter this business. He started small, selling small quantities grown in the village to brokers in bigger towns. Then he became a wholesale seller for a lot of farmers. That’s when we made money," said Gomango.

The police & the priest

Marijuana is not measured by weight but by volume in these parts. The tribals believe that their iron-rich soil is best for growing the plant, without any fertilizers. They simply dig holes in the ground and throw the seeds. The plants start to grow wildly everywhere.

Since the business is illegal, there is no official record citing its extent anywhere. Official crackdowns give us a sense of the scale. The Andhra Pradesh government claimed that it has been able to bring down the cultivated area of cannabis from 14,000 acres to 800 acres in one of the main hotspots, the Alluri Sitarama Raju district, as per a report in The Hindu newspaper, published on 25 December last year. The Odisha police has seized 6,614 quintals of ganja and destroyed cannabis grown on 101,578 acres in the state since 2018 until June, said a report in the same newspaper, published on 11 June this year.

Balliguda, a village in the Kandhamal district of Odisha, is another marijuana hotspot—so much so that the district police’s official social media feed is filled almost entirely with ganja seizures, as if they are the sole crime here.

While the administration cracks down from time to time on the farmers and traders, the economic transformation of families in the tribal belt has meant a lot of local support, even from unexpected quarters. One of them is Livingstone Gomango, an elderly priest, who lives next to Liponi Gomango. He has been protesting before the administrative offices to legalize marijuana.

“I’m the head of 61 churches in this neighbourhood. I live a very Christian life. But I support ganja cultivation," he said. “I don’t use ganja. There’s actually no culture of smoking marijuana here. But for us, it’s become like any other crop—like paddy or potato," he added. When the authorities destroy the fields in raids, they are destroying the opportunity for people in the region to get a better life, the priest further said.

“They can at least provide half of the crop damage as compensation, right?", he asked.

Farmer at the hut

A hundred kilometres away from Gomango’s house, is Balliguda. If you climb onto a hill high enough, you can spot hundreds of acres that grow just cannabis. Well, in certain months. The crop was last harvested in July and much of the land appeared barren with signs of plants being uprooted. Cannabis plants can grow as tall as 12 feet.

Blessed with a temperate climate, abundant greenery, and plenty of arable land where usually cows graze, Balliguda lives in splendid isolation from the outside world. Its transformation began when some villagers, who worked as migrant labourers, returned with cannabis seeds and began cultivating them on family plots. To their delight, the returns far exceeded what they got from traditional crops like paddy. Word spread like wildfire, and soon, every villager wanted to ape them.

Today, farmers have distributed land parcels across the hills dedicated to cannabis cultivation. It takes about six months for the plants to mature. And even small plots yield several sacks each season.

This writer visited a local farmer’s house to understand how the business of cannabis works. Unlike Gomango, he hasn’t made much money and still lives in a mud hut with no toilet.

The 25-year-old farmer, strongly built, with dilated pupils and stained teeth, didn’t want to be identified. Before he spoke, he rubbed dried ganja between his palms until it became powder. This powder went into a windpipe wrapped with palm leaves. He lit up and puffed.

At the lowest rung of the ganja economy of the village are those who provide information about the supply chain, the farmer said after a few puffs. The farmers, mostly tribals, are also at the bottom of the pyramid. Middlemen facilitate transactions between farmers and wholesalers, who, in turn, supply to larger cities across India. Since the middlemen take the biggest risks, and have access to the markets, they reap the highest profit.

The price fluctuates. In January this year, the farmer was offered ₹4,000 for a kg. In July, prices dropped by half. If farmers can hoard the produce for longer periods, say until West Bengal’s Durga Puja vacations—when demand for ganja peaks in West Bengal, a neighbouring state—they will make more money. But then, they are afraid of police raids, which results in distress sale.

The farmer started cultivating five years ago, drawn to the crop not just by the money it promised but also its less labour-intensive nature—he only waters the plants once every four days. A healthy plant can fetch him anywhere between 500 gm and 1 kg of ganja.

The farmer’s only worry? He can’t do this full-time. He belongs to the Gond tribe, a community mandated to graze all village livestock. Since every other male member of his family has moved to bigger towns for work, he is now the village’s authorized cattle grazer.

While this farmer is split between different jobs and hasn’t made much money through weed, there is an aspirational value about this business in the region. People speak about it as if they’ve found a hidden treasure, a gateway to all the riches out there.

“Last year, I went to my relatives’ place and they had just begun cultivation," another farmer from Balliguda said, requesting not to be named. “They were looking at 1.5-ton production. I immediately decided to start growing."

Right now, he has around 15 kg of weed waiting to be sold. But then, he was offered a price even lower than what the farmer quoted in the first instance got— ₹1,000 for a kg.

“I might sell it," he said, rather resigned. “I need the money."

Bullets & sunglasses

Those who don’t need money right away store their crop. What’s a good place? Water tanks.

They produce so much weed in Balliguda, the village is now running out of place for storage. The water tanks no longer store water. Some houses are packed up to the rafters with the crop. And all the drug money shows up in how the village has changed. When people get wealthy, they consume.

Nobody buys cycles in Balliguda any longer. Almost every house has a motorcycle. There are four bike showrooms and last month, an outlet selling Royal Enfield bikes opened. “We opened on 23 June. Within 15 days, we sold 13 bullets," Bikas, the store manager, said.

Some villagers have the latest edition of SUVs from Korean carmaker KIA. Construction sounds of houses and buildings have become the new normal in an otherwise quiet village. The main street has dozens of new shops, catering to everything from food to home appliances. A few years back, this street had very little to boast of.

Demand for furniture, particularly, has soared. The town’s main furniture shop has expanded to three godowns. Requesting anonymity, the owner of the business said his revenue totals ₹55 lakh a year now. Five years ago, he made about a lakh.

There are three nationalized banks in the village but they are useless for the ganja trade—this economy operates on cash.

Krishna Moha Rana, a worker with a non-profit that is active in the region, said that he went to a farmer’s house after demonetization to help him change the currency notes. “I went there thinking he is a small farmer. How much cash can he have? I stopped counting after ₹35 lakh," he said.

The farmer grew ganja and stored all his cash without spending.

One of the surest signs of money are people buying sunglasses. This writer noticed kids roaming around wearing branded sunglasses in the evening—sun or moon, they look cool.

Meanwhile, according to Niti Aayog’s ‘Multidimensional Poverty Index’ (indicators of health, education and living standards are measured by the index), the Kandhamal district has seen substantial improvement—the percentage of population who are multidimensionally poor in the district has fallen from nearly 45% a few years ago to 25% in 2019-21.

Liponi’s fate

The opulence is only tempered by the need to avoid law enforcement. Big dealers, who reportedly bribe everyone in the region, also beef up on their security. Outsiders visiting the village—like this writer did—can invite suspicion and trouble. One dealer’s house this writer saw had a wedding-like pavilion erected in the front yard. Five muscular men watched every movement. The porch had two SUVs and two bikes.

Those who cannot pay for security, maintain a low profile. Small traders try to change their vehicles after every crop season, to avoid police identification.

Mint couldn’t immediately get in touch with administrative officials in the region but a police official in Balliguda, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that smuggling was skyrocketing. About 200 people were being held in a jail near the village, he said, adding that 180 of them are associated with ganja.

For those who are arrested, the shadow of legal consequences looms large. Let’s circle back to Liponi Gomango, whose family became a millionaire trading in ganja.

On 30 October, last year, her husband Dasarathi Gomango was travelling to deliver 100 kg of ganja to a new buyer. He is yet to return home. His consignment was seized in an impromptu crackdown by the police. He is in jail.

Several payments are due—children’s tuition fees; the loan on the Bolero; the construction of the second floor of the house. Gomango is locked into a lifestyle she can’t afford any longer.

“I don’t know if my husband will ever return," she said. Which makes her wonder: is the weed trade worth the risk?