The
coming of the IGNP canal in the seventies in the western Rajasthan has brought
far reaching fundamental transformations in a pastoral region. Chhatragarh is
located on the right bank of the IGNP main
canal around 82km from
Bikaner in the north western direction
on the Bikaner - Anupgarh route.In Bikaner district
IGNP canal passes Chhataragarh bisecting the regions into two parts -the right
bank that is the canal command area and the left bank where rainfed drylands
continue.
Animal husbandry has been the major occupation of
the people in the region
. The local inhabitants of the region
Jalukas, Johyas, Nayachs, Samejas, Utteras, Goperas, Parihars, have
been semi nomadic cattle breeders who have distinguished themselves as breeders of the
Rathi breed. The area is known for indigenous wool yielding breeds of sheep like Magra,
Chokla, Pugal, Nali. Life
revolved around livestock in this
region along with some cultivation of
bajra, moth, til, gowar mainly
for subsistence needs. The large
herds of cattle and sheep could be sustained
on the rich variety of fodder which was available in this region in plenty.
The grasslands used to have many
protein rich grasses like
sewan, bhurat, ganthil,
talla, bhankhri, bekaria,
baru, dhaman, murat and trees and
bushes like khejri, ker, ber, phog, kumta. Water
was available in wells, talais, johads
and tobas which were either used
and managed by the entire village or
were caste or clan based. In fact the area around Chhatragarh was well known among the nomadic pastoralists for
these sources of water
and fodder. The tract of `chitrang', the native term
for this area, was famous for the conducive conditions it offered for not only
pastoral groups settled there but even
to those who passed through it during their seasonal migrations.
Settlements
on the right side of Chhatragarh are heterogeneous in terms of cultivation patterns and residential
population. There are old
settled villages which are now either fully or
partly irrigated. Sattasar, Loonkha, Kishanpura, Kankrala, Tharoosar
have been concentrations of nomadic and semi nomadic pastoral groups. A number of new chaks have come up in
these villages. The settlers
in the irrigated area are older
natives of this area including the
pastoralists, new allottees who
have come from nearby villages and from other districts
of Rajasthan, including the settlers
in the Bhoodan land. These settlements present a scenario of an
expanding irrigated agriculture, conversion
of natural grasslands into Forest
land and degradation of the rich bio-diversity,
increased dependence on the canal water with
it's new cycles whereas the traditional water sources
like wells, johads, tobas have either fallen out of use or are in
a damaged state.
The villages on the left side of Chhatragarh are
a thick spread of old,
fairly big rainfed villages. Kela,
Sadolai, Rajasar Bhatiyan, Mahadeowali, Kundal are populated by
pastoralists who still keep large herds
of sheep and cattle. Livestock farming is
still
the main occupation of the majority of people. Husbandry of animals retains
it's traditional ties with rain fed
cultivation despite the fact that more land is used for
agriculture. The gochars in these villages are in a degraded state.
Although the
reliance on
traditional water sources like
individual kuis, johads and
kunds is there, even these villages
are becoming dependent for their
drinking water supply on the canal water.
The
third cluster of settlements which the team retained contacts with are
a group of villages on the northern
border of the Bikaner
district. Jalwali, Malkiyawali,
Jinnatawali, Kundal, Shekhra and
Rojhri are old `classic' settlements of semi
nomadic
pastoralists of the
Chitrang tract. The major inhabitants
of these villages are Jalukas, Johyas, Raths, Parihars, Kharals who are
widely recognized as breeders of Rathi and Sahiwal
cattle. Some of them
originally belong to areas
near Fort Abbas
in Bahawalpoor and had come to
settle here around 1947. Others had come to Chitrang from villages in Ganganagar and
Punjab in 1947 and then slowly branched off in these villages.
Now the _and of Jalwali, Malkiyawali,
Jinnatawali comes in the command
area.
Almost
all the earlier water sources have been either allotted or have a marginal significance because of the
availability of the canal water. Most of the grasslands have been either
converted into Government fodder farms or have been acquired by the Forest Department. The crisis of grazing
space and prospects of earning more
profits from cultivation of cash crops like cotton and groundnut
have impelled these people to take different tangents away
from the sole occupation of livestock rearing which relied on extensive grasslands and was
nomadic in nature.
Apart
from the muslim population which constitutes the majority of the pastoralists,
sheep and cattle are kept in different units by Jats, Rajputs, Meghwals,
Nayaks, Suthars, Sansis. The practice of
intensive cultivation even on a small scale has exercised
a considerable influence
on the life
of the semi
nomads in particular on the species composition of herds, the routes
and seasonal prevalence of pastoral migrations. In the irrigated area there
is an increasing trend towards keeping less animals with a preference for cattle. The spread of
irrigated agriculture seems to have
affected sheep population more
than the
cattle. The resource intensive inputs in irrigated
agriculture need cattle for
they serve as useful draught animals as well as are a handy source
of manure. The trend increasingly is to maintain smaller herds of cattle ( around 5 - 10) who
can survive on green fodder which the pastoralists grow in their fields.
These pastoralists mostly rely on stall feeding and sedentary
pasturage in nearby areas. Increasingly fewer people are
keeping large herds of sheep (150
and more) for that would entail
practicing long distance migratory pasturage.
This is prevalent
more among the populations living in settlements which
are partly irrigated. The decisions
to keep smaller flocks of sheep (less than 100)
depend upon local availability of pastures.
Those who
keep small units of both sheep and
cattle go on migrations
but which are shorter both in time and distance from the
longer cycles of seasonal transhumance. A few muslim groups like
Jalukas, Johyas still keep large
herds of
Rathi cattle (around 200 - 300).
They own irrigated land but do not
cultivate it themselves. They have given their land to others to cultivate for them on a sharecropping basis,
whereas they still continue to practice
husbandry as their
prime occupation. In
order to maintain
these large herds they have migrated to the area in and around
the mandis of Punjab and have settled there on an almost permanent basis.
This is suggestive
of a process
of sedenterization which has been on the way since the last decade.
But the
shift to intensive cultivation is far
from total and cannot be said to be uniform. In fact the
different combinations of livestock
keeping and intensive cultivation show the different transitional states
ranging from an adaptation of the older traditions of
husbandry to changed
conditions, different combinations of smaller
herds depending upon local ecological conditions to even cases of total depastoralization.
This
variety perhaps cannot be explained by the physical changes which
the canal has brought along with it. These are related to factors
like availability of
resources required for
the transition to intensive cultivation, nature of division of labour
within the household for agriculture and
livestock farming and comparative prospects of earning cash from livestock
rearing or intensive cultivation.
Moreover the changing attitudes
towards husbandry have affected decisions made at household level
with
mostly the younger generations finding the older pursuit of their
elders as `hard', `time consuming' and
`unproductive' in the
contemporary context.
Excerpted From: Tradition and Change: A Report on the Ecological Conditions of North west Bikaner, AZERC, URMUL Trust, 1994
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