Challenges Facing Pastoralists in the Himalayas and Western India

India’s pastoralists have been herding livestock across mountains, deserts, and grasslands for centuries. From the Gaddi shepherds of Himachal Pradesh migrating through high-altitude Himalayan meadows, to the Raika camel herders navigating the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, and the Maldhari communities of Gujarat – these communities have built entire ways of life around mobile livestock rearing. Yet today, this ancient livelihood is under serious threat. An estimated 13 million people in India practice pastoralism as a hereditary profession, and their challenges are growing more complex with every passing decade.

Who are the pastoralists of the Himalayas and western India?
Declining pastures and shrinking grazing land
Government policies and land rights conflicts
Geopolitical pressures on Himalayan pastoralists
Lack of veterinary care and livestock health services
Climate change and degrading rangelands
Socio-economic changes and the erosion of traditional knowledge
What needs to change

Who are the pastoralists of the Himalayas and western India?

The Himalayan region is home to some of India’s most well-known pastoral communities. The Gaddis of Himachal Pradesh herd sheep and goats between valley floors in winter and high-altitude meadows in summer. The Bakarwals and Gujjars of Jammu and Kashmir follow similar seasonal migration routes, while the Dokpas of North Sikkim are yak herders who access high-altitude pastures in a pattern distinct from the rest of the Himalayan range. In the western region, communities like the Raikas and Rabaris of Rajasthan and the Maldharis of Gujarat have historically moved their herds across vast dryland landscapes in search of fodder and water.

Around 77 percent of India’s farm animals are kept in extensive herding systems, and pastoralist communities contribute nearly two-thirds of the livestock sector’s share in India’s GDP. Despite this economic significance, these communities remain politically marginalized and are rarely factored into land-use or development planning.

Declining pastures and shrinking grazing land

Loss of grazing land is perhaps the most immediate threat pastoralists face. The Indian government does not recognize “pastoralism” as an official category, so it collects no data on pastoral land use and makes no special effort to protect the resource base these communities depend on – forests, village grazing grounds, fallow fields, and so-called “wastelands” that actually sustain large livestock populations. All these common-pool resources are shrinking, as they are fenced, expropriated, converted to agriculture, or barred for herders.

In the Himalayas, the situation is made worse by government afforestation programs. Research published in Ecology and Society shows that government plantation drives in the Indian Himalaya have directly reduced grazing areas for communities like the Gaddis, and that the spread of invasive plant species – particularly lantana – has made large tracts of winter grazing grounds unusable for livestock. Reports from Gaddis describe losing over 180 animals in a single incident after their flock grazed on an invasive species near the Beas river in Kangra.

In western India, the challenge takes a different shape. The expansion of wind turbines and solar energy plants across the rangelands of Rajasthan and Gujarat – driven by government and corporate green energy projects – has eaten into vast stretches of grazing land that communities had used for generations. Sacred groves in Rajasthan are also being encroached upon by expanding industry and agriculture, further reducing the forage available to pastoralists.

Government policies and land rights conflicts

State policy has historically worked against pastoralists rather than for them. The declaration of Nanda Devi Biosphere and Askote Wildlife Sanctuary in 1992 removed nearly 60 percent of the traditional grazing resource base for Himalayan communities, with their entry into ancestral grazing areas completely banned. Since then, forest officials have increased surveillance, and pastoralists often pay regular grazing taxes and tolls just to pass through forest corridors, according to Cultural Survival.

Conservation policy has also had contradictory outcomes. A study on the long-term impact of a grazing ban in Khangchendzonga National Park in Sikkim found that evictions carried out between 2000 and 2002 deepened poverty among weaker pastoral households, while elite pastoralists appropriated the benefits of conservation policies by securing exclusive rangeland access. The ban did not demonstrably improve biodiversity; instead, it triggered social conflict and brought new conservation challenges.

The Forest Rights Act, which was meant to formally recognize the rights of forest-dependent communities, has offered little relief. Authorities believe pastoralists damage forests, so no pastoral community has yet received grazing rights under this Act. Without legal recognition of their customary rights to land and migratory routes, pastoralists remain vulnerable to evictions, encroachment, and the erosion of their livelihood base.

In western Rajasthan, since the 1980s, pastoralists have been required to obtain permits from the panchayat and police just to cross state borders with their animals. Irrigation projects like the Indira Gandhi Canal and successive droughts during which no government relief was offered for livestock – only for humans – further decimated the pastoral economy of the region.

Geopolitical pressures on Himalayan pastoralists

For Himalayan communities, political borders have literally cut off traditional grazing routes. The Dokpa pastoralists of North Sikkim historically crossed between India and Tibet for seasonal grazing, but after the Sino-Indian war of 1962, they lost both access to Tibetan pastures and their cultural ties with Dokpa families on the other side. Similarly, the termination of India-Tibet border trade in 1962 caused economic disaster for border trading communities like the Bhotiyas of Kumaon, who had balanced pastoralism with cross-border exchange for generations.

Lack of veterinary care and livestock health services

Pastoralists rear livestock as their primary economic asset, yet they have little access to the health services those animals need. Government veterinary services often do not reach migratory communities at all. Since mobile herders are not stationary at their registered residential addresses, they fall outside the service delivery radius of most government facilities.

Pastoralists at national-level consultations have reported that while central government livestock insurance and veterinary programs exist, they are largely inaccessible given the remoteness of herding areas, especially across the Himalayan belt. In Rajasthan, a survey found that livestock owners rarely consulted government veterinarians even where clinics existed – often because of a deep cultural gap between formal veterinary services and the ethno-botanical knowledge systems that pastoralists have relied on for centuries, as documented by the League for Pastoral Peoples.

The consequences of this gap are significant. Disease outbreaks spread quickly through unvaccinated herds on migratory routes. Mortality rates remain high, and when animals die, so does income. Advocates working with pastoral communities have pointed out that government efforts tend to favor Western pharmaceuticals over traditional herbal remedies, which risks anti-microbial resistance and dismisses locally effective knowledge.

Communities like the Raikas of Rajasthan and the Maldharis of Gujarat are landless livestock rearers with no political clout and little access to education, veterinary support, or institutional resources, making them especially vulnerable when their animals fall ill.

Climate change and degrading rangelands

Climate change compounds every other challenge. Case studies across the Himalayan region document changing patterns of rainfall and snowfall, along with extreme events like cloudbursts, floods, and landslides. These disruptions affect grass regeneration, reduce above-ground biomass, and escalate competition between livestock and wild herbivores – which also increases the risk of disease transmission between domestic and wild animals.

In the Himalayas, warming temperatures are reshaping the landscape that pastoralists have navigated for generations. Glacial recession is altering water availability, pastures are becoming less productive, and the timing of seasonal migrations – built on centuries of ecological knowledge – is being thrown off. Changing snowfall duration and extreme precipitation events are perceived by pastoralists as directly impacting grass regeneration and the viability of high-altitude pastures.

Socio-economic changes and the erosion of traditional knowledge

Beyond the ecological and political pressures, pastoralists also face a deep socio-economic transition. In recent decades, the pastoral livelihood system has been changing due to land-use changes, economic shifts, education access, and aspirations for upward mobility – all of which have reduced the willingness of younger generations to continue herding. As more young people pursue education and urban employment, the labor available for herding dwindles.

The workforce in the Central Himalaya is no longer large enough to fulfill the demands of herding, as non-agricultural income opportunities have drawn people away. More and more hired laborers now accompany livestock to pastures instead of the families who own them – and hired workers, lacking deep traditional knowledge, tend to keep herds in nearby pastures only, foregoing the full seasonal migration that sustains herd health and pasture diversity.

A key concern across case studies in the Himalayan region is the declining interest among youth and the erosion of traditional knowledge systems tied to pastoral ecology. This loss is not just cultural – it has practical consequences for sustainable rangeland management, indigenous livestock breeding, and the intergenerational transfer of skills that keep pastoral communities resilient.

In western India, the Ministry of Agriculture’s livestock policies have focused on cross-breeding indigenous animals with exotic breeds while neglecting breed conservation, which has gradually undermined the genetic diversity and hardiness of the livestock that pastoral communities have developed over centuries.

What needs to change

Addressing these challenges requires a fundamental shift in how the state views and relates to pastoralists. Pastoralists themselves have called for formal mapping of migratory routes, implementation of the Forest Rights Act at the block level, creation of fodder depots, a nationwide livestock census, and mobile first-aid kits for herders in remote areas. They have also asked for geographic indicators on specialized livestock products to improve market access and recognition of their unique breeds.

Community livestock volunteers and locally embedded organizations have been identified as more effective than top-down government programs in delivering veterinary care and preventative treatment to migratory herders. Integrating traditional knowledge with formal training – especially for youth – is seen as essential for sustaining pastoralism into the future.

The challenges pastoralists in the Himalayas and western India face are not isolated problems. They are the result of overlapping policy failures, ecological pressures, and decades of institutional neglect of a community that contributes significantly to India’s food economy, ecological resilience, and cultural heritage.

What do you think? If the Indian government officially recognized pastoralism as a distinct livelihood category, how might that change the way policies are designed for these communities? And as traditional knowledge systems erode with each generation, what responsibility do we have – as a society – to document and preserve them before they disappear?

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Table of Contents

Who are the pastoralists of the Himalayas and western India? 🔗

Declining pastures and shrinking grazing land 🔗

Government policies and land rights conflicts 🔗

Geopolitical pressures on Himalayan pastoralists 🔗

Lack of veterinary care and livestock health services 🔗

Climate change and degrading rangelands 🔗

Socio-economic changes and the erosion of traditional knowledge 🔗

What needs to change 🔗