Foreword of DG, MPCST              Contents

Resource Atlas of Jhabua:
A Celebration of the Land and People of Jhabua

India is a land of extraordinary natural and human endowments. Nature has provided almost every part of India with abundant resources for the sustenance of a rich human civilisation; and, the people of India, over millennia of intense interaction with their immediate environment, have learnt the most effective ways of gratefully accepting the nature’s bounty.

Notwithstanding the uninterrupted richness and a certain uniformity of natural endowments over almost the whole of Indian land, the detailed hues of nature, of course, differ in different parts. People in different parts seem to appreciate the special endowments of their niche in the world; in every part, they have developed agronomic practices, irrigation techniques, technologies and crafts, architectural styles, social customs and festivals, and much else, to make a world of their own within the larger Indian physical and civilisational ambience.

It is gratifying to observe the special natural endowments, and social, cultural and technological practices of different parts of India. There is indeed poetry in the way nature expresses itself in different parts, and in the way the people mould their life in consonance with it.

It is important in itself to learn the details of the geography, geology, climate, demography, landuse, animals, irrigation, agriculture, crafts, industry, culture and religion of different parts of India. It is essential to learn such details, if we want to make any effective and sensitive developmental intervention in their life and environment. M P  District Resource Atlas Programme is designed to collect such technical details for every district, and also to capture the poetry of the interaction between nature and civilisation, as far as possible.

Jhabua district lies in a difficult terrain. It has the Vindhyas in the south and the Malwa plateau in the north. The landscape is marked by high barren hills and mounds interspersed with relatively lower, but always undulating, lands. According to the scientific classification of lands, there is little land in Jhabua that can be put to sustained use under irrigation, and there is little land that may be classified as highly fertile and capable of sustained agriculture. Yet, per capita production of food in the district equals the national average.

Jhabua is the land of Bhils, a tribal people with a hoary history and tradition. According to the creation story of Bhils, the first Bhil was given a plough and a pair of bullocks by Mahadeva and promised that the land he sows would yield an abundance. The Bhils have held Mahadeva to His word; they manage to extract a reasonable abundance from this land of limited fertility.

From the Editor’s Introduction

J.K. Bajaj (Editor-in-Chief and Volume Editor)
Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai, 2008
M.P. Council of Science and Technology, Bhopal
ISBN 81-86041-25-7 hb
ISBN 81-86041-26-5 pb
Price Rs.1000/- hb
Price Rs.400/- pb