Resource management in drylands: the Rajasthan example

The Indian Desert like any other dryland is a vast stretch of inhospitable land comprising about 6.3 per cent of the country's total area. It fails to support even at a moderate level a small population, not exceeding 2.0 per cent of India's total population. It's a problem region from the point of view of ecology, partly being a fragile natural ecosystem and partly as a result of unabated interference by man by way of over-cultivation and over-grazing. Famines and droughts are the recurrent phenomena, frequently leaving scars on the human and animal life.

The environment imposes certain limits on each living community and there exists interactive relationship. However, it could be firmly asserted that no region is rich or poor but what is required is an appropriate technology to arrive at an objective development with in the framework of man-nature-development syndrome. Recent technological innovations have enabled man to husband the sandy waste into a green cultivated land. The success stories of Israel and the wild South-West USA and nearer home the Gang Canal Colony and developing Rajasthan Canal Command Area inspire man's efforts to transform the vast stretches of dry-sandy parched lands, elsewhere. Considering the recently emerging problems of salinization and alkalinisation resulting finally into of desertification, the urgent need is for a package development programme which could forestall any further deterioration of the drylands' environment.