December 8, 2002

Development can lead to environmental destruction if it is unplanned and thoughtless, as Robert Alter tells us in his study of an Indian hill station

What was often referred to as the ‘Maruti revolution’ made matters even worse. The Maruti was a new, small, low-consumption, reasonably-priced car that hit the Delhi market in 1985. It was produced by a collaboration between the Suzuki company in Japan and a government of India corporation. They were immensely popular and sold by the thousands. For many nouveau riche families in Delhi they were the up-grade replacement for motorcycles and scooters used in the past. And, of course, it was the families that could afford the Marutis, and wanted to use them, that could also afford a summer holiday in Mussoorie.

Traffic jams became daily occurrences, something we had never seen before. Mussoorie’s narrow and limited number of roads were not up to the pressure. And, of course, all the new cars brought even more people to Mussoorie. Another change, a result of this new kind of ‘affluent mobility’, was Mussoorie’s becoming a weekend resort during the rest of the year. What was once only a summer resort was rapidly turning into a year-round weekend retreat. The number of boarding schools in Mussoorie also kept pace with these changes. Where there had been eight English-language boarding schools a decade earlier, there were now eighteen.

Mussoorie’s economy benefited immensely from these developments, and the dairy families we knew and worked with benefited accordingly. We did a quick survey in 1992, and found the amount of milk produced locally and marketed in Mussoorie had more than doubled in the past eight years. Families that had three or four milk buffaloes when we did our survey in 1984, now had six or eight. The number of migrant families coming into the Mussoorie forests from across the Aglar river had also doubled, and we estimated that the number of animals they brought with them had nearly tripled.

When we had done the dairy survey in 1984, the one problem we felt we might be able to tackle was that of locating alternative markets during a three-month dairy ‘off season’. With boarding schools closed for the winter, and Mussoorie’s population down to 20,000 from a peak of 100,000 in the summer, dairy farmers were left with an excess of unsalable milk during those months. One solution was to transport excess milk to Dehra Dun and other plains’ markets.

We tried to persuade the larger producers to pool their resources and buy a truck, cooperatively, that could be used to transport milk to Dehra Dun during the winter months, and which could be used profitably for transporting other goods and produce during the summer. They saw the point but were hesitant to cooperate. Instead, several bought their own vehicles, including the enterprising Jivanand family.

Another solution was to make cheese and butter and ‘ghee’ (clarified butter) out of excess milk, which could be sold later during the summer tourist season. In fact, some cheese was already being made in Mussoorie by an enterprising shopkeeper in Landour, and some of the milk families we knew had benefited accordingly. Of course the off-season price was low, and they complained about this.

There was even talk of forming a milk cooperative that could produce and market cheese on its own. This kind of thing was being done in Himachal Pradesh, under similar circumstances, and with considerable success. But, before much along those lines could happen, Mussoorie’s milk market changed completely. What had been a nine-month market was now a full twelve-month one, and one in which demand far exceeded supply. The dairy families we knew could now sell all the milk they produced, and that for twelve months of the year. Things had never been so good.

But, what was all this doing to the forests near Mussoorie? We could see what was happening all around us. But here, again, was one of those things that we, as outsiders, felt strongly about, but about which local village people seemed indifferent. We held a series of group meetings with dairy farmers explaining why we were alarmed by what we saw happening to their forests and urging them to do something about it.

They understood what we were talking about, but weren’t about to cut back on the number of animals dependent on forest produce, when there was so much money to be made. They listened politely to our suggestion that they grow fodder crops on their fields, as dairy farmers did on the plains. This would be a valuable supplement, we argued, to what they brought in from the forest and would help reduce the pressure on their forests.

But they weren’t interested. Their fields were too small, they replied and if they were to grow burseem and sorghum and other fodder crops for their animals, what would happen to the wheat and potatoes they were already growing. Besides, why panic, when there was still plenty of free fodder to be had in the forests around them.

Yes, they knew overlopping was taking place, but it wasn’t their fault. They blamed it, instead, on the migrant dairy families who came into their forests from the outside. The migrants brought too many animals they said. When migrants obtained licenses from the forest department for three or four animals, they cheated and brought eight or ten instead. And why weren’t the migrants caught and punished for this, we asked? The answer was simple. It was easy to buy off the forest guards sent to check on them. Everybody did it. They did it themselves, even, when they had to.

Moreover, they pointed out, these forests didn’t really belong to the migrants in the way they belonged to their own local village communities. As a result, migrants didn’t care what happened to them. It was the migrants who cut too many leaves and too often. They were the ones doing the damage. The solution, as they saw it, wasn’t in growing new kinds of fodder crops in their fields but in keeping migrants out.

Excerpted with permission from
Water for Pabolee: stories about people and development in the Himalayas
By Robert C. Alter
Orient Longman, 3-6-276, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad 500 029, India Tel: 91-040-3224294
Email: editor@pol.net.in
ISBN 81-250-2191-4
240pp. Indian Rs250

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)