ABSTRACT
The government policy of drift followed until 1860 when several developments forced a total policy reversal. The decision to replace Assam kanee with Behar abkaree was followed by the total prohibition of the private cultivation of poppy. Anandaram Dhekial Phukan, in his memorandum to Moffat Mills, wondered, ‘whether by interdicting the culture of the drug the Government contemplates to expel the general use of opium or proposes to substitute its own in lieu of the native opium’. The receipts from opium in Assam formed the bulk of the excise revenue. Indeed the Government’s policy of drift with trial and error proved it at its ambiguous best – it was as Guha remarks a ‘monopolist’s profit maximising policy’ in the garb of promoting collective good. The colonial administration, however, adopted the declared intention in the Bengal Resolution that of ‘maximum revenue and minimum consumption.
