Ajay Rout is an Indigenous farmer in a remote village in a southern district of India’s Odisha state.

The village is surrounded by forest and hills, with the nearest market 10km (6.2 miles) away.

The 34-year-old grows sweetcorn and vegetables on his 0.2 hectares (0.5 acres) for both his family to eat and to sell at the market.

Rout said this income is a pittance, so he has taken up growing cannabis, a banned drug, for a better income.

He has about 1,000 cannabis plants located deep in the hills, which require a trek of at least two hours each way to get to because the path is full of boulders and rocks, making it almost impossible for him to ride his bicycle or motorcycle.

The cultivation of cannabis – also known as hemp, marijuana, weed and ganja – is legal for medicinal use only in several states, including Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, which became a federal territory in 2019. Odisha is not one of them.