For over 30 years, Sahjeevan has empowered India’s pastoralist communities to secure grazing rights, conserve rare livestock breeds, and build self-sustaining livelihoods in Gujarat.
India’s pastoralist communities have found a steady partner in Sahjeevan, a nonprofit based in Gujarat’s Kachchh region. For more than 30 years, the organization has worked alongside herders who move cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, and camels across some of the country’s harshest terrain. Its name combines two words meaning togetherness and life, a fitting description of decades spent building trust in the field.
Sahjeevan’s approach rests on a simple belief. Communities that have shaped a working relationship with their landscape are often best placed to protect it. That idea has guided the group’s work since it began in Kachchh, then expanded into Saurashtra and, more recently, across India.
Much of that work centers on the Banni grassland, one of Asia’s largest tropical grasslands. Pastoralists known as Maldharis have grazed cattle and buffalo here for generations. Their herds include the Banni buffalo, a hardy breed known for high milk yields and long grazing distances at night.
Sahjeevan’s reach now stretches across six distinct terrains within Kachchh and Saurashtra. These include grassland, thorn-scrub forest, mangroves, and both rain-fed and irrigated farmland. Each terrain supports different pastoralist communities and livestock adapted to those specific conditions.
Fencing, invasive weeds, and shifting management rules have squeezed the grassland in recent decades. An invasive tree introduced decades ago to curb salinity spread aggressively, crowding out native forage grasses. Herders say these changes threaten both their livelihoods and the ecosystem they help maintain.
Sahjeevan has helped pastoralist communities respond by turning to India’s Forest Rights Act. The 2006 law lets communities claim formal rights over forest and grazing land they have traditionally used. Since 2012, herder groups in Banni have filed claims covering thousands of square kilometers of grazing land.
Communities that file these claims form management committees to oversee the land. These committees draft plans to regenerate grasslands, remove invasive species, and protect wildlife. Progress has been uneven, with some approved claims still awaiting formal government titles.
Elsewhere in Gujarat, Sahjeevan supports herders raising other distinctive breeds suited to extreme conditions. Fakirani Jat herders in coastal Kachchh keep Kharai camels, a rare breed able to swim several kilometers to graze on mangrove leaves. Rabari and Jat communities in other areas raise camels, goats, and sheep across desert and thorn-scrub terrain.
India’s pastoralist communities include Fakirani Jat herders who raise Kharai camels, a rare breed capable of swimming several kilometers to graze on mangrove leaves along Gujarat’s coastal Kachchh. Photo courtesy of Sahjeevan.
Beyond grazing rights, Sahjeevan helps these pastoralist communities diversify how they earn a living. Programs support wool and milk value chains, veterinary care, and market connections for non-bovine dairy products. Partnerships with dairy cooperatives aim to bring pastoral milk into wider markets while keeping herding economically viable.
Much of this work happens through community-based organizations that Sahjeevan helped establish. The oldest of these, formed in 2008, now counts more than 1,800 animal breeders among its members. These groups give herders a collective voice in decisions that affect their grazing lands and livestock.
Sahjeevan also engages with government agencies and courts to advocate for pastoralist recognition. In one case, a herder group took legal action to remove agricultural encroachments from the Banni grassland. As the [Forest Rights Act](https://tribal.nic.in/fra.aspx) states, communities that gain recognition also take on responsibility for conserving biodiversity and managing forest resources sustainably.
Sahjeevan organizes this broad effort around three interconnected approaches. It equips pastoralist communities with information and market linkages, helps them build lasting institutions, and advocates for supportive policy at the state and national level. Together, these approaches aim to give herders a stronger say in decisions that shape their futures.
Three decades on, Sahjeevan’s work continues to expand beyond Kachchh into new landscapes across India. Its core belief remains unchanged: pastoralist communities who understand their land are essential partners in conserving it. That partnership offers a model for balancing biodiversity conservation with the livelihoods of people who have sustained these landscapes for generations, long before conservation became a formal discipline.
