Protecting our livestock is not an act of charity; it is an urgent economic and ecological imperative that requires treating common natural assets as the life-sustaining public treasures they truly are
Maharashtra has traditionally been a proud net exporter of fodder to water-stressed regions. During the British era, when Marathwada formed part of the princely Hyderabad State, surplus wild grass and crop residues were exported by train from its riverine and fertile plains across Nanded, Parbhani, Jalna, Latur and Aurangabad via the Nizam’s Guaranteed State Railway (NGSR), Barsi Light Railway and Godavari Valley line. The baled supplies were routed towards the Bombay Presidency, dry Gujarat and Rajasthan belts, and military cantonments, as well as southwards into the Madras Presidency. Severe famine cycles, however, such as the Great Famine of 1876-78 or the 1899-1900 Chhappanja Dushkal (as it was in Vikram Samvat 1956), reversed this freight flow to import emergency fodder into Marathwada from Vidarbha, Central Province Forest belts and Konkan areas to keep draught livestock alive. Maharashtra currently reels under a relentless drought cycle affecting 265 talukas in 32 (nineteen fully and twelve partially) of its total 36 districts. The severe rainfall deficit has triggered a disastrous fodder crisis across Maharashtra, threatening millions of livestock that sustain the state’s rural agrarian and dairy economy.
Based on the 20th Livestock Census (278.36 lakh to 330.80 lakh heads) and nutritional standards framed by the Maharashtra Animal and Fishery Sciences University (MAFSU), the state faces a baseline annual requirement of 1,176.78 metric tonnes (MT) of green fodder and 377.87 lakh MT of dry fodder, with routine shortfalls of 22.79 per cent and 21.43 per cent, respectively, even during normal monsoon years. During widespread drought cycles affecting 265 of 358 talukas, this structural gap escalates into a severe crisis; for instance, it is reported that an October state assessment recorded available lean-season stocks at just 102 lakh MT, leaving an active cumulative deficit of approximately 211 lakh MT.
The historical architecture of Maharashtra’s fodder security rested on a decentralised triad of village common grazing lands known as Gairans, agricultural crop residues and vast forest reserves, including Kurans. While the western districts and Marathwada areas traditionally generated surpluses of crop residues, such as sugarcane tops, maize, soybean crop residue, dry pulse straw, sorghum fodder, etc., Vidarbha produced mountains of paddy straw. Forest zones in the Western Ghats and Konkan, as well as forest areas of Vidarbha, provided ample grass to meet the state’s needs. During past drought crises, such as those of 2014, 2018 and 2023, state-sponsored institutional collections mobilised huge volumes of fodder. A closer look at the dismantling of the traditional safety nets and the resultant crisis lays bare decades of systemic failure-not merely in enforcing land-use discipline, but also in governing, conserving and protecting Maharashtra’s village commons, lands and forests.
The most glaring casualty of this collapse is the village Gairan, or Gochar land, which historically provided the primary free pasturage for rural livestock. In an affidavit submitted in the suo motu PIL (2 of 2022) in the Bombay High Court, the government submitted that approximately 2.23 per cent of the 4.52 lakh hectares of designated grazing land across the state was under encroachment. Despite this, Sections 22A (2) and 22A (3) of the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code (MLRC), 1966, gave the state government the power to divert Gairan upon the Divisional Commissioner’s recommendation of an “unavoidable requirement”. Again, the Supreme Court’s order in the Jagpal Singh case (2011) asked all state governments to evict encroachers and restore common grazing lands exclusively for public utility, but independent surveys reveal a loss of grazing commons across Gairan and Class-E lands of between 1.50 lakh and 2.00 lakh hectares.
Classified under Section 22 of the MLRC, Vidarbha’s Class E lands (Gurcharan/free pastures) were placed under the Revenue Department’s jurisdiction and historically served as a critical first line of defence for livestock grazing during dry spells. However, although decades of administrative disputes between the Forest and Revenue Departments over the applicability of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 (FCA), based on the ‘Zudpi jungle’ nomenclature, have saved many areas from diversion, their capacity to mitigate the current fodder crisis has been reduced to near zero due to relentless encroachments, infrastructure diversions and the choking of 30-40 per cent of the surviving area by invasive species.
A critical yet overlooked aspect of Maharashtra’s Forest management is its British-initiated dual-governance architecture, under which timber-rich “Class A” forests were assigned to the Forest Department, while pasture-oriented “Class B” forests fell under the Revenue Department, with District Collectors mandated to manage local nistar grazing rights on them. Historical figures highlight a steep decline in Class B forests-from over 10 lakh hectares in the 1950s to roughly 1.43 lakh hectares today-where, despite stabilisation under the FCA in 1980, a lack of active management for fodder severely undermines their potential to alleviate the state’s fodder crisis.
Mismanagement and land diversion have virtually eliminated village grazing buffers, forcing rural communities to depend on crop residues such as sugarcane tops, cereal straws and kadba. However, during droughts, these by-products meet no more than 30–35 per cent of seasonal requirements. With a fodder deficit of 211 lakh metric tonnes, standing forest biomass is an indispensable alternative.
Prior to the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, the Forest Department actively harvested and baled 25,000-65,000 MT of grass annually (rising to 80,000-100,000 MT during droughts), supplying 40-60 per cent of Maharashtra’s emergency fodder during historic droughts such as those of 1972 and 1986-87. Post-2006, however, the sector’s contribution has collapsed to under 2-5 per cent of state demand. Paradoxically, misinterpretations of well-meaning laws such as the FRA and PESA prevent vast forest biomass from being used in state disaster response. Currently, Community Forest Rights (CFR) for Minor Forest Produce (MFP) cover 22 per cent (13.64 thousand square kilometres) of Maharashtra’s forests. Although Section 3(1)(c) of the FRA restricts MFP (grass here) ownership to ‘traditional collection limits’ and to the communities of Forest Dwelling Scheduled Tribes (FDST) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFD) only, District Level Committees across the state have issued these rights haphazardly to Gram Sabhas and without defining quantities.
Local bodies and authorities have been made to misconstrue usufruct rights over the ‘traditionally collected quantum of MFP’ as ‘absolute commercial ownership of all unsevered standing grass on state-owned forest land’, violating basic property law principles and ignoring the fact that standing grass, the immovable asset integral to state-owned soil, is public property. With the Forest Department duly sidelined, such fodder reserves, rendered surplus after fulfilling the forest rights of FDST and OTFD, remain unharvested and are lost to annual wildfires, while the total absence of state tracking of extractions leaves resource sustainability completely compromised. In Maharashtra’s Scheduled Areas, too, Section 4(m)(ii) of PESA has been misconstrued to endow the Gram Sabhas with absolute commercial ownership of unsevered standing forest grass (a biological/silvicultural resource) rather than harvested produce (a commercial/marketable entity). This erroneous conflation has effectively decoupled these forests in the 13 PESA districts from disaster response frameworks. The Forest Department having been made to relinquish silvicultural oversight, local government officials fail to monitor extraction or sustainability, ultimately affecting the state’s emergency attempts to source fodder.
To mitigate Maharashtra’s crisis, the state must unlock blocked forest resources by having District Level Committees (DLCs) quantify community rights to MFP (grass) for the true beneficiaries of the FRA and also compute the requirement for grass in PESA areas based on local livestock needs, enabling Collectors to harvest and distribute surplus fodder for disaster relief. The salvaging of moisture-rich green sugarcane tops should be incentivised through manual harvesting. As a long-term strategy, the diversion of all lands dedicated to grass/fodder production should be banned and encroachments removed. All lands, including Class B forests, should be made productive through assured investments, and the policy of monsoon sheep grazing should be withdrawn.
Protecting our livestock is not an act of charity; it is an urgent economic and ecological imperative that requires treating common natural assets as the life-sustaining public treasures they truly are.
Forest zones in the Western Ghats and Konkan as also forest areas of Vidarbha provided ample grass to meet State’s needs. During past drought crises like those of 2014, 2018, and 2023, state-sponsored institutional collections mobilized huge volumes of fodder
The writers are Former PCCFs, UP and Maharashtra; Views presented are personal.