Creeping Wasteland

The authentic data on wastelands, available for the first time thanks to the preparation of the "Wasteland Atlas of India" with the use of remote sensing and space imagery technologies, performs the first task of recording the reality on the ground accurately. Armed with this knowledge, efforts can now be made to make things better. As much as one-fifth of the country's total geographical area is wasteland of one kind or another. Other than the extent of the degradation, it has happened the most where things are highly fragile. The hilly states have the maximum degraded lands, much of it due to the human factor. States with fragile geology as well as ecology such as Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and some north-eastern states have managed to turn more than half of their area into wastelands. Barring the perpetually snow-bound regions of these states -- which have been classified as wastelands though these are actually highly beneficial as sources for the perennial rivers -- the other decrepit areas in the hilly tracts are either degraded forests or the victims of shifting cultivation.

 

Unlike water and some other natural resources that are renewable, land is not only non-renewable but also, in some respects, a shrinking resource. Rapid economic growth, which is being pursued with every effort, is bound to push up urban, industrial and infrastructural (road and rail) demand for land. This will impinge on the supply of land for agriculture, livestock grazing and forest cover needed to protect the environment. Rising crop yields will release some land from cultivation but this will take place at a slower rate than the increase in demand from towns and industries. The growing food processing and other agro-based industries may even take up some of the surplus agricultural land.

Proper management of the wastelands is, therefore, necessary not just to meet the total demand for land but also to protect the environment. Top priority has to be given to curbing the process of degradation so as to stop adding to wastelands. Next comes the need to reclaim those parts of the degraded lands which can be restored to good health. The land-use policy needs to be recast with this end in view. The newly created department of land resources under the rural development ministry has proposed a national policy for the management (as against the mere use) of land resources. While this is the right thing to do, it should be preceded by a precise capability classification of land, especially of the wastelands. This will give policy makers a clear idea of what a particular stretch of land is fit for and, more importantly, unfit for.

The land management issue has another crucial dimension. Wastelands, barring the absolutely barren tracts, usually have a large dependent population, mostly indigenous peoples whose stakes cannot be ignored. Any step aimed at putting the land to use according to its carrying capacity or suitability for particular use will be socially, as well as politically, impractical without addressing the interests of these original inhabitants. Their involvement in the management of wastelands, including equitable sharing of the benefits accruing from good management, is indispensable. In fact, they have to be encouraged to take charge of the betterment of what is really their land.