![]() ![]() Here, the Western Ghats rise abruptly some 50 km inland from the Arabian Sea to an altitude of 1,000 m to 1,500 m. These conclusions emerge from a 12-year study of rural society in western Maharashtra. ![]() Social tensions are increasing as people fight over scarce natural resources, and because the caste system continues even after losing its raison d’etre, it has become a source of social power and oppression. The growing monetisation of the Indian economy, first encouraged by the invading British, then by independent India in the name of development, has destroyed the ancient sustainable and shared patterns of resource-use evolved over centuries. Malhotra and Gadgil are quick to point out that even though the caste system lasts till today, it has stopped ‘resource partitioning’. This ‘resource partitioning’ helped to reduce competition and, hence, conflict among human beings over scarce natural resources, and to create the right psychological environment: the allottees of an ecological space developed sustainable patterns because they had no worry that their resources would be snatched away from them and probably also because they knew that if they exhausted the resources in their own space, they would not be allowed to use any other. An ‘ecological space’ and its natural resources could only be used by a definite occupational group. Within the caste system, birth determined a human being’s occupation. In other words, it was a social system which both forced and cajoled the social being right from birth to adopt sustainable cultural mores. It was a system which, on the one hand, forced its members to share natural resources and on the other created the right social milieu in which sustainable patterns of resource use were encouraged to emerge. How has India’s caste system, so elaborate - an estimated 40,000 castes -rigid, hereditarily determined, hierarchical and oppressive a social structure lasted for so many centuries? Madhav Gadgil, an ecologist, and anthropologist Kailash Malhotra feel that the answer probably lies in the discipline that the caste system brought to the use of natural resources. The question has troubled sociologists for years. Their 12-year study documents how the pastoral and nomadic castes developed traditions of prudence in the use of resources and how resource depletion and environment degradation marginalised several communities.Īt a time when social tensions are on the rise with people fighting over scarce natural resources, it is important to remember how the caste system taught ‘genuine cultural adjustment’ and sustainable and shared patterns of resource-use over centuries. Madhav Gadgil, an ecologist, and anthropologist Kailash Malhotra trace the history of India’s caste system that had enforced discipline in the use of natural resources and played a crucial role in preserving India’s natural riches.
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