The Vanishing Grasslands of India: A Threat to Biodiversity

It has been ten years since the Planning Commission Task Force on grasslands suggested various policy initiatives on saving these critical habitats, as well as communities dependent on them. Today, India’s ecologically-fragile grasslands remain degraded and more areas are falling prey to anthropogenic activities. Subir Ghosh highlights the reasons why grasslands are highly important ecosystems and the current status of these ecologically-fragile habitats, particularly in India.

- Subir Ghosh

About four years ago, the Karnataka Government was accused of diverting 10,000 acres of land for various defence, scientific, and developmental projects. The merits or demerits of the land-grab allegations aside, there was a rather interesting and disconcerting element that kept cropping up—that the state government thought there was no issue of note with the land concerned, for it was perceived to be a virtual wasteland—a swathe of unusable land that was now being put to good use.

Therein lies our story, for these were the grasslands of Challakere taluk in the Chitradurga district of Karnataka. Therein also lies the bigger picture: that grasslands, except for people, such as conservationists and activists, are hardly seen or even understood as ecosystems. Any lay person with little or no knowledge of ecology would know that a forest for instance is an ecosystem; that it is a habitat for various species. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of grasslands, these are seen as lands that are of no use.

The State of the Grasslands

In simple words, the bad news: grassland ecosystems across India are in peril. Worse is the fact that there are no plans to save grasslands. After all, if you want to save an ecosystem, you cannot do so through knee-jerk reactions in the form of a law here or a rule there: you need to have an over-arching policy in place.