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A Profile of Ecologically Fragile Dahanu Taluka
Modernity's perception of an "ecologically fragile" region quite often discounts the strain on the social fabric caused by the sustained notions of distributive justice. The language articulating the politics of conservation sometimes hides the ideas of social equality that it inadvertently compromises. These tendencies have thrown up seemingly complex contradictions, which are dominating the discourse over social ecology, development and ethnicity.
 Dahanu, a Western Indian town located on the margins of the neo liberal economic tide, is a microcosm of this phenomenon. The town dreams of an explosion of the money economy and yet it is not willing to give up its tranquil life style. It wants to embrace the consumerist world view but narrates stories of the ecological wisdom of the Warlis, a tribe that symbolizes the cultural milieu of the region.
Situated a mere 120 kilometres north of the city of Mumbai, Dahanu taluka is today at crossroads - ecologically, socially, culturally. Surrounded by the rapidly advancing industrial and commercial metropolises of Mumbai and Vapi, it's communities struggle for survival, even as their space and natural resources remain heavily contested.
Dahanu's population consists predominantly of the indigenous community of Warlis. The region also has a large fishing, farming, and traditional artisan community. Famous for the chikoo fruit, Dahanu is also home to the fun loving and eccentric Zoroastrian community, primarily orchard owners.
 Topographically, Dahanu taluka can be divided into a 10-12 kilometre wide bandarpatti, the coastal belt of lowlands and flats extending from the sea coast to the railway line situated at the foot of the Sahyadari range. The entire coastal belt with its rich natural resources, wetlands, mangroves and river deltas, forms a lucrative fishing area. The junglepatti, to the east of the railway line consists of tropical deciduous forests. Interestingly the forest cover in Dahanu is still fairly high at 45.2 percent. A large part of the indigenous community resides in this zone, in remote almost inaccessible villages.
In spite of a rich tradition of resistance, the indigenous Warlis have today become poor marginal farmers or migrant labourers barely surviving from year to year. While their narratives and consciousness come from a history of police brutality, exploitation by landlords, moneylenders and liquor contractors and from their continuous struggle for land rights and access to the forests, they are today forced into practicing settled subsistence agriculture. Moreover, categorized as backward and primitive, their culture, heritage and ecological understanding has come under attack. They now live on the margins of industrial and urban areas on the fringes of their slowly eroding forest lands.
Additionally, the coastal commons of Dahanu are also severely threatened. With the construction of a fossil fuel based thermal power station, Dahanu's environmentalists have had had to relentlessly campaign to protect the destruction of natural resources and the marginalisation of communities through the alienation of their livelihood resource. Even though Dahanu has been declared an ecologically fragile area, the battle to restrict unplanned, haphazard and inequitable development continues.
 The farming and orchard owning community in Dahanu also grapples with its own realities. With declining yields and reduced viability of the orchard economy the challenge facing the farmers is to be able to retain their tranquil way of life while yet redefining their sources of livelihood. The need of the hour is to demonstrate alternative and sustaining forms of development, that are economically and ecologically viable.
In an attempt to safeguard the direct expropriation of natural resources, prevent environmental degradation and protect traditional livelihoods, several groups in Dahanu has been crusading relentlessly for over a decade.
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