Hatod <notes from a Central Indian village>

Project-Overview "The Last Resort" (feb. 2003) other pages: Econotes ~ Wildlife ~ Place ~ Pics ~ Legend ~ Recipes ~ Our Microreserve Project ~ Home ~ e-mail

Our experimental micro-reserve project in Hatod (Shivpuri District, Madhya Pradesh, Central India), which we call "The Last Resort", was begun in 1995 with a focus upon the year 2020. First review and final-focus is due in 2005. This text is a brief early-2003 overview, while all of the other pages in the 'Hatod' section of this web site (blue text-links directly above) date from 1997 or earlier. Other links (i.e. upper line) are periodically updated.

Briefly then:

• Shivpuri district is presently headed into a very deep and nasty water-crisis, along with all of the other attendant crises such as failed crops, dying cattle, loss of income & jobs, spread of ill-health & disease, rise in crime and other social ills, etc.
• Speaking locally:~ whilst precipitated on this occasion mainly by the failed monsoon of 2002, these crises also derive substantially from the ongoing pressures of human population growth, greed, lack of foresight, absence of planning, decline of morality, transparent profit in flouting the law,.. and the deeply entrenched corruption this all feeds upon in local, statewide and national governance which also allows, supports and feeds of natural resource plunder such as unregulated groundwater drawing, illegal deforestation, illegal mining, illegal land-grabs and all the rest
• Whereas there have already been some reports of starvation deaths (denied by the government) in this and at least one other adjoing district, it may quite reasonably be expected that these crises will all worsen and spread till relieved, at least partially and temporarily, by the next monsoon in July 2003 ~ i.e. hopefully
• A similar state of affairs, to varied degrees of alarm, also obtains across many other parts of India at the present time

At The Last Resort, the situation today is that our wildlife-corridor forest section has now been almost completely closed to human and cattle traffic for more than 4 years, along with the adjoining section owned and maintained by our northern neighbour and partner on the project, Mr. Ajit Singh.

However, the situation with regard to the 180 hectare hillock of public land we provide the wildlife corridor to, and through it to a section of the nearby Madho National Park, is at crisis state,.. many years before our original expectations. One reason for this is certainly that we have been unable to get the government to re-notify this as protected "Forest" land, even though it meets (or at least till very recently met) the Supreme Court thumbrule of 20 trees per acre,.. and also proximity to a National Park boundary. Over the years, we've argued the case all the way up to various exalted quarters ranged from the (then) Chief Election Commissioner of India (whose family lands abut us) and through several successive District Collectors,.. to no avail. And circumstances are only compounded by the fact that Ajit Singh and I both live and work elsewhere and cannot really give the project enough personal time first-hand.

There has therefore been substantial tree-felling by the local hooch-makers to distil their deadly brews, and occasional poaching on the sides of the hill away from us is ongoing. Wildfowl on the hill were poisoned by unknown persons earlier this year, as was the river.. again. The flag of official corruption still flies above the morning bazaar held in nearby Kota village every day, hawking fish poached every night from the lakes inside Madho National Park! More generally, the ground-water table is dangerously depleted, substantially on account of the state government having sponsored free electricity for pump-sets up to 5hp for years (anything for votes in a democracy), and of course, the rising population pressure draws ever closer to pressure-cooker status every day.

Nevertheless, our own project (including The Last Resort, Ajit's segment and the hill) has been successful enough so as to be able to help host a small herd of deer, at least one family of wild-boar, a rather large and handsome Jungle Cat that has now lived on and off upon the hill with us almost 3 years (generally with a litter each time), and a horde of other smaller species in numbers far exceeding what may be found in almost any other equally small part of the district,.. including the national park itself. The crocs in the river are in trouble though, as that's almost dry and yet still being drawn upon by desperate farmers for irrigation. And my personal position on rhesus macaques is now modified, from experiences in Hatod and elsewhere around India, to the belief that we need to have a very-very substantial, and national, culling of the species.

As might be expected, the non-forest section of our site is also now much closer to the profile we'd targeted from the beginning, as an almost organic extension from the natural chaos of the forest-section into a symbiotically engineered "human" environment ~ including a small section under the plow, already providing almost entirely for (with a little help from us of course) just a bit under three generations of a family of Adivasis (landless local tribals) and a young Sikh lad, son of our neighbour to the South.

In sum therefore, the site in it's entirety is now only partially on track to becoming a healthy micro-reserve sustainable into the future, as it seems that we might well yet find ourselves with no other way forward than to isolate the site from the surrounding environment almost entirely,.. if possible.

On funding:~ Whereas we have occasionally put out informal feelers to draw in knowledge, goodwill, associations and support on this project, including offers for the site to be used for alternative rural development technology-demonstrators and experiments, no external support at all has been forthcoming thus far. On the other hand, the project is tracked by several oganizations around the world, including a division of the FAO.

Also over the years, several non-governmental institutions have sought association conditional upon us registering the project as an NGO ourselves. However, we prefer to see ourselves as further down the development pyramid, standing testimony instead, if unavoidable, to the fact that nothing at all from the vast international pie on environment, that so many vultures feed off, ever reaches the ground level of a small landowner trying desperately to save a microsom of natural ecology in Hatod village, Shivpuri District, Madhya Pradesh, Central India,..

... while nasty issues large and little, affecting people, development, the environment and the future just go on on and on multiplying, spreading and suppurating ever further.

Shankar Barua ~ September 2002