On the morning of January 21, a group of around 70 people stood in front of the Tanot Mata temple in Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer district, roughly 30 km away from the India-Pakistan border.
After praying at the temple, the group began to beat drums and set off on a long march along the roads of the Thar desert.
As they marched, they raised the slogan, “Oran bachao, gochar bacho!” – save orans and gochars, referring to community groves and grazing lands that they see as sacred.
The same day, the Rajasthan government allocated 745 hectares of land to solar power companies in Jaisalmer’s Ramgarh tehsil. While locals do not yet know the exact piece of land that has been allocated, they fear that such a large tract will likely be land that has been classified in government records as wasteland, but that in fact is part of an oran, and is used by villages around it.
The marchers were walking in protest of exactly such practices. Over the last few years, they said, the Rajasthan government had allocated thousands of acres of orans land in the state to renewable energy plants. These allocated lands also included ponds and other water bodies managed and protected by local communities, they noted.
This is particularly...
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