State, peasants and land reclamation: The predicament of forest conservation in Assam, 1850s1980s
The present work examines the changing notion of wastelands and contested rights over it in Assam in the last 200 years. As the East India Company gradually became aware of this region, they expressed their serious interest in the wastelands. The initial intervention took place with the discovery of tea plants in Assam, and the Company administration began to lease out such lands to the European planters. During the 1830s and 1870s, a significant amount of such lands was transferred to the planters. It was from the 1870s that the newly