LAND OF MILK. Banni is pivotal grazing land for dairy farming in a terrain unsuited to agriculture | Photo Credit: ASoyanke

Sarpanch Hussain trains the children of the semi-nomadic pastoralist Maldhari community to understand the changing landscape of the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. Nearby is the site where the world’s largest solar plant is under construction along Banni grasslands. Villagers fear it may endanger the ecology of the wetlands, and the arrival and nesting of migratory birds.

Declared a ‘protected forest’ in 1955, Banni is a Unesco ecological hotspot and Asia’s largest tropical grassland. Spread across 2,500-3,847 sq km, Banni serves as pivotal grazing land for dairy farming, as no agriculture is possible in the salt-encrusted region along the Indo-Pak border. Despite the loss of fertile land post Partition, it is peculiar that India has no policy to protect the open lands that impact communities and the environment.

About 65 per cent of India’s population lives in areas bordering protected forests, holding on to the generational wisdom that is critical to sustain balance in nature. “Study how a society uses its land, and one can come to pretty reliable conclusions about what its future will be,” Dr EF Schumacher writes in his seminal book Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. He argues that unmanaged growth as a top-down policy may be more damaging than lack of development. He advocates for developmental models that are based on grassroots choices and consumption patterns.

A river basin in Mandvi offers such a community-trusteeship model. The Rukmavati river rejuvenation programme involves 60,000 people across 55 villages. Villagers, elected representatives and technical partners collaborated under the stewardship of the industrialist and social activist Kantisen Shroff.

A proponent of Schumacher’s theories, Shroff (fondly called ‘kaka’ by the communities he worked with) collaborated with the locals to simplify the programme, turning each stakeholder into an active participant. Over 384 surface structures were built to hold 398 million cubic metres (MCM) of water, alongside 1,639 recharge wells to replenish aquifers to ensure water security for the community until 2041. The water budget was designed to increase water availability from -175.35 to 45.81 MCM.

Kaka pioneered a conservation model for Banni grasslands on the same lines, with Maldhari chieftains confirming the success of ‘community trusteeship’.

Outdated policy

India needs to steer away from an “exploitation-first” economic model towards an integrated ‘community-trusteeship’ model. Driven by an outdated forest policy that ignores native know-how, man-made degradation serves as a stark counterpoint to naive copy-paste strategies that ignore the grassroots conditions impacting unique habitats and water ecosystems across India.

Under the guise of promoting green energy, Rajasthan lost 3 million khejri trees (Prosopis cineraria) to solar plants — land given to solar power companies at no cost (with lucrative tax rebates), threatening the very biodiversity they claim to protect. The 50,000-hectare Nelia grasslands, near Mundra, are at risk. Shokaliya grassland in Ajmer, Rajasthan, is overrun by the invasive Prosopis juliflora species, following decades of mindless tree plantation drives that failed to engage with the locals. A similar acacia afforestation programme in Wai, Satara district, has disrupted the delicate flora unique to the Kaas plateau.

To protect natural ecosystems, whether waterbodies, mountains, plains, grasslands or marshes, the government should establish a statutory framework for community-based natural resource management, granting grasslands the same legal tenure and governance rights accorded under the Forest Rights Act 2006.

While the watershed management policies govern water and the FRA protects forest commons, non-forest open biomes remain legally unprotected and vulnerable to misclassification as “wastelands” for mega-infrastructure development. By formally giving community forest resource (CFR) rights to traditional pastoralist gram sabhas, native communities receive the legal title, authority, and veto power over land diversion. It is time for a shift from top-down land alienation to an institutionalised ‘community-trusteeship’ model that protects biodiversity through native ecological stewardship.

The State should institutionalise the ‘community-trusteeship’ model as a formal, legally backed policy, moving away from reliance on isolated philanthropic acts. Much like the Rukmavati river rejuvenation programme (now undertaken by Shree Vivekanand Research and Training Institute, Mandvi, and the Agrocel Foundation) provides a replicable governance template that brings people, village panchayats, and industry under a single, integrated authority, and gives local communities the much-needed veto.

(Maya Rane is a communications and brand reputation consultant; Bhole Vishwakarma specialises in environmental policy)

Published on August 17, 2026