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