Assam

Assam occupies the Brahmaputra valley in India’s north-east, with the Barak valley to the south. The capital is Dispur, a district of Guwahati. The Brahmaputra runs the length of the state, joined by the Barak, Subansiri and Manas, and the annual flood is a defining fact of life — the river shifts its channel, erodes banks and submerges farmland most monsoons.

Tea is the oldest industry: Assam produces more than half of India’s tea, grown on estates across the upper valley that were established in the nineteenth century. The state also holds India’s oldest oil fields — Digboi, with a refinery dating to 1901 — along with natural gas, and it is the world’s main producer of muga silk. Tea garden labourers, many descended from nineteenth-century migrants, remain a distinct and politically significant population.

The state has among the most complex demographic politics in India. Questions of migration from Bangladesh, the updating of the National Register of Citizens, and the delimitation of constituencies have driven state politics for decades. Kaziranga National Park, on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra, holds the largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros.