Ghazipur opium factory

Ghazipur opium factory - from wikipedia

The opium factory located in the city was established by the British and continues to be a major source of opium production in India. It is known as the Opium Factory Ghazipur or, more formally, the Government Opium and Alkaloid Works. It is the largest factory of its kind in the country and indeed the world. The factory was initially run by the East India Company and was used by the British during the First and Second Opium Wars with China. The factory as such was founded in 1820 though the British had been trading Ghazipur opium before that. Nowadays its output is entirely above board, controlled legally by the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substance Act and Rules (1985) and administratively by the Indian government Ministry of Finance, overseen by a committee and a Chief Controller. The factory's output serves the global pharmaceutical industry. Until 1943 the factory only produced raw opium extracts from poppies, but nowadays it also produces many alkaloids, having first begun alkaloid production during World War Two to meet military medical needs. Its annual turnover is in the region of 2 billion rupees (approximately 36 or 37 million US dollars, for a profit of about 80 million rupees(1.5 million dollars). It has been profitable every year since 1820, but the alkaloid production currently makes a loss, while the opium production makes a profit. The typical annual opium export from the factory to the USA, for example, would be about 360 tonnes of opium. As well as the opium and alkaloid production, the factory also has a significant R&D program, employing up to 50 research chemists. It also serves the unusual role of being the secure repository for illegal opium seizures in India—and correspondingly, an important office of the Narcotics Control Bureau of India is located in Ghazipur. Overall employment in the factory is about 900. Because it is a government industry, the factory is administrated from New Delhi but a General Manager oversees operations in Ghazipur. In keeping with the sensitive nature of its production, the factory is guarded under high security (by the Central Industrial Security Force), and not easily accessible to the general public. The factory has its own residential accommodation for its employees, and is situated across the banks of river Ganges from the main city of Ghazipur. It is surrounded by high walls topped with barbed wire. Its products are taken by high security rail to Mumbai or New Delhi for further export.

The factory covers about 43 acres and much of its architecture is in red brick, dating from colonial times. Within the grounds of the factory there is a temple to Baba Shyam and a mazar, both said to predate the factory. There is also a solar clock, installed by the British opium agent Hopkins Esor from 1911 to 1913. Rudyard Kipling, who was familiar with opium both medicinally and recreationally, visited the Ghazipur factory in 1888 and published a description of its workings in The Pioneer on 16 April 1888. The text, In an Opium Factory is freely available from Adelaide University's ebook library.

Amitav Ghosh's novel Sea of Poppies deals with the British opium trade in India and much of Ghosh's story is based on his research of the Ghazipur factory. In interview, Ghosh stresses how much of the wealth of the British Empire stemmed from the often unsavoury opium trade, with Ghazipur as one of its centers, but he is also amazed at the scale of the present-day operation.

The Ghazipur Opium Factory may have one more claim to fame, for a rather unique problem it has. It is infested with monkeys, but these are too narcotic-addled to be a real problem and workers drag them out of the way by their tails. - wikipedia