The idea that wastelands are unproductive continues to be pervasive and is used by various agencies to gain control over marginal landscapes and remake them for productive purposes with dire results

Vanak, Abi Tamim

English

University of Kentucky

33On March 19, 1972, Lt. Hiroo Onada of the JapaneseArmy surrendered his arms on the Philippine Island ofLubang. He and his comrades hid on the island for 29years, unaware that Japan had lost World War II. Theyhad viewed with extreme suspicion all contact attemptsto let them know the war was over. During the nearly30 years that Onada and his platoon lived on the island,they had killed at least 30 Filipinos, injured at least a100 others, and by the end, also cost the lives of three ofhis companions.This quirky bit of history illustrates the dangers ofnot just being out of touch with reality, but also of notkeeping up with the times. Closer home, the Departmentof Land Resources (DLR) under the Ministry of RuralDevelopment continues to follow archaic andirrelevantdefinitions of land use categories. Take, for instance,the definition of “wasteland”, first propounded by JohnLocke. According to the anthropologist JudyWhitehead, Locke’s “concept of wasteland, as opposedto value-producing land, constituted a founding binaryopposition that constructed how landscapes werecategorized. Associated with wildness, wilderness, andsavagery in the 19th century, the category of wastelandalso defined who would and who would not becomemost vulnerable to dispossession and/or enclosure”.Thus, common village lands that were used forpastoralism and that were essentially untaxable, weredeemed wastelands. These were appropriated by thestate and divided amongst the peasantry, because itwas assumed that private ownership and intensivecultivation was the only way to make land moreproductive.Continuing the use of this outdated terminologythe  “Wasteland Atlas of India” produced  by ISRO forthe DLR includes waterlogged areas and marshes,which are known to be essential for groundwaterrecharge; mountains under permanent snow, the sourceof our greatest rivers; savannah grasslands andpasturelands, on which depend the lives andlivelihoods of millions of livestock and pastoralists;deserts, sand dunes, rocky outcrops, inselbergs, andplateaus, rich geological features that are also home toa unique set of fauna and flora under the broad categoryof wastelands to be “developed” and converted to“productive” land uses.What emerges is an ecologically illiterate andmyopic view of what constitutes “productive” landbeing used to label 15% of the country’s geographicalarea as wastelands. That’s an astounding 46,000 sq.km of land (larger than Switzerland) that is supposedly“unproductive”. The government proposes that thisland can be made productive again by plantinggrasslands with alien tree species, quarrying the hillsto feed the construction boom, and handing out vaststretches of land to industry, and thus alienating thepeople who depend on it, destroying endangeredwildlife and ecosystems, and concretizing the rurallandscape.The idea that wastelands are unproductivecontinues to be pervasive and is used by variousagencies to gain control over marginal landscapes andremake them for productive purposes with dire results.In 2010, the Ministry for Environment and Forests,sought to cordon off large stretches of grassland for aproject to reintroduce cheetahs in India.”It is importantto bring the cheetah back as it will help restore thegrasslands of India” they said(The Guardian 29 Jul2010)when approving the plan. In contrast to this, theMinistryfor Rural Development sought to acquiresavanna grasslands and other habitats forindustrialization.”Maharashtra, MP, Rajasthan, J&K,Andhra, Himachal have significant percentage ofwasteland that can be exploited for developmentpurposes” (Times of India, 16 Oct 2013). Consequentlyeven the benign sounding Integrated WatershedDevelopment Program resulted in destruction of largetracts of semi-arid savannah grasslands inMaharashtra.Savanna grasslands have suffered the most inIndia both historically and in current times. Under theBritish, nomadic pastoralists were sedentarized, andWastelands of the mind: the identity crisis of India’ssavanna grasslandsAbi Tamim VanakFellowAshoka Trust for Research in Ecology and theEnvironment (ATREE), Bangalore, IndiaE-mail : avanak@atree.orgPlenary Lecture 334the grasslands they depended on were converted toagriculture using canal irrigation. The resultantsalinization of these soils has now rendered onceproductive grasslands to wastelands. They assumedthat forests were the natural vegetative cover in India,and any forest “blanks” were an aberration, or a sign ofa degraded ecosystem, and continued to raiseplantations of water hungry non-native trees across thecountryside. This ignores the fact that grasslands inIndia have existed as natural ecosystems as far as 50million years ago as evidenced by fossil records. Indeed,this notion that equates “eco-friendly” with treeplanting has driven India’s green policy such as the“Green India Mission”, and the CompensatoryAfforestation Programme and Management Authority(CAMPA).The contention that grassland systems are lessproductive is clearly a straw man. The economies ofseveral countries depend heavily on grasslands. Notfor a second would anyone consider labeling the vastsavannas of the Serengeti with their spectacularassemblages of large fauna as wastelands, nor the areasinhabited by reindeer grazing Lapps in Norway andSweden. Why then do we in India, with more than 500million livestock, and millions of pastoralists dependenton these for fodder consider these areas aswastelands.While previously this viewpoint was froman agro-centric perspective, i.e. land that did not growfood that could be taxed was land lying waste; in theneo-liberal era, declaring land as wasted has becomethe easiestway to grab it in the name of industrializationand development. A prime example of this is theallocation of approximately 10,000 acres of “kavals” orgrazing lands reserved for the Amrit Mahal breed ofcattle to several national institutions such as DRDO,BARC, IISc and some private companies.This perception of non-forest natural areas as beingwastelands is now deep-rooted in the public psyche.To change this mindset will require recognition of threemain issues:1. Non-forest natural areas, especially grasslands,marshes and even rocky outcrops and glades arenot marginal habitats, but are as important andvaluable as other forested systems. Indeed manyof these habitats not only have unique sets of floraand fauna, but also human livelihood systems thatare exquisitely adapted to these systems. Forexample, savanna grasslands support severalendemic and critically endangered species suchas the Great Indian Bustard and blackbuck. Theyare also home to nomadic pastoralists who havefor centuries understood the vagaries of the climatethey live in and developed complex rotationalgrazing systems to prevent over-grazing and yettake advantage of the seasonally ephemeralresources.2. The categories of wastelandsdeveloped by thegovernment are based on their ‘productive’potential. So a demarcation of these areas lendsitself to subsequent ‘improvement’. However, thisdelineation is based on a highly biased, archaicnotion of production, often ignoring the cultural,ecological and traditional association of localpeople with the land. For example, most of theupper reaches of the Himalayas, and almost theentire district of Ladakhare classified aswastelands. The irony of categorizing the “abodeof the gods” as a wasteland is seemingly lost. Theforms of ‘improvement’ that are envisaged for thesenon-forested wilderness areas conform to ideas offorested, irrigated or industrialized landscapes,and are ecologically illiterate, culturallyinsensitive and ignore centuries of  customarypractice.3. The exercise of wasteland categorizationviolatesseveral laws or policies of the government.Several wildlife sanctuaries and national parks(e.g. Kutch wild ass sanctuary, Hemis nationalpark, Rollapadu blackbuck sanctuary) notifiedunder the Wild Life (Protection) Act (1972),wetlands and marshes that are notified RAMSARsites, sand dunes that protect our coasts from stormsurges and which are notified under the CoastalRegulation Zone Act are all labeled as wastelands.There is thus a clear need for a policy shift awayfrom these archaic categorizations of landscapes, to onethat is more in tune with the socio-ecological fabric ofour country.One that values land intrinsically, and notjust as a means of production from a very narrowperspective. Indeed, the only categories of truewastelands that the Wasteland Atlas of India showsare industrial and mining wastelands. The richdiversity of landscapes in India does not deserve theignominy that has been heaped on them.ContributorsAnkila HiremathAshoka Trust for Research in Ecology and theEnvironment (ATREE), Bangalore, IndiaNitin RaiAshoka Trust for Research in Ecology and theEnvironment (ATREE), Bangalore, India

Wastelands of the Mind: The Identity Crisis of India’s Savanna Grasslands

https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&amp;context=igc

Wastelands of the Mind: The Identity Crisis of India’s Savanna Grasslands

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