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For centuries the grasslands in an otherwise arid region of North- Western Gujarat, bordering Pakistan, have been home to the Maldharis, a predominantly Muslim community of traditional cattle grazers with a rich heritage of culture, art and music. Fifty years after lndia's independence the entire pastoral community: their habitat and a way of life is under threat of extinction from natural calamities and human intervention in the name of development. Traditional practices of survival have been disrupted; native knowledge and skills have been made redundant. In the fourth successive year of drought an entire population has been reduced to digging ditches and carrying mud - surviving on dole. During this re-telling of peoples' histories, what emerges is an understanding of the larger causes of scarcities and famines. And the need to review the very processes of planning and development which is continually depriving not only the people of BANNl, but the dispossessed all over the world of the right to survive on their own terms.
