I vividly remember my first encounter with the great Indian bustard. It was on the outskirts of Bikaner in 2000. I was a young researcher, roaming the scrublands with more curiosity than knowledge. On one such outing accompanied by a few other researchers, I experienced a “not-seen-before” moment. The bird emerged first as an unidentifiable shape, tall and measured in its stride. Its sheer size, the way it rose into the air with slow, powerful wingbeats, left a lasting impression. In retrospect, that first sighting was also among the last in that landscape.
It is Rajasthan’s state bird and once inhabited the vast open grasslands of Thar desert, far from human settlements. Its numbers were never large, even in the 1980s and 1990s, but the collapse that followed in the next two decades has been severe. We have lost this charismatic species from nearly 90 per cent of its former range, including the very site where I first encountered it. For generations, people in this harsh landscape have survived by living in close alignment with their surroundings. Livelihoods, daily rhythms, knowledge systems and even cultural expressions in the form of songs, food and rituals are bound to local biodiversity. When a species disappears, therefore, the loss extends well beyond ecology. In the past, the Indian gazelle, the blackbuck and several other grassland species have also followed similar trajectories of de-cline. Even native plants that once shaped local diets and folk medicine are retreating. The phog bush, whose flowers were mixed with curd to help people endure extreme summer heat, has vanished from many areas under growing human pressure.
There is no such thing as a “wasteland” in western Rajasthan. Landscapes so labelled in colonial land records are, in practice, pastures, medicinal repositories, grazing commons and wildlife habitat—assets essential to local survival. Yet the term endures, and has become a convenient justification for diverting land to state-backed development projects. This re-mains among the most contentious fault lines between local communities and the government. It takes only minutes of con-versation with village residents to hear their concerns voiced with blunt clarity: “Where will the wild animals live if the government itself is taking over their last remaining habitats?” The anxiety is not abstract. Biodiversity here is not an environmental slogan but a component of cultural identity. Folk songs still recall plants and animals that no longer exist in the region. With shrinking habitats and local extinctions, that cultural fabric is thinning. Increasingly, these concerns are finding expression in sit-ins and protests.
Some use simple interventions, so the young stay connected to nature. One Ecology, Rural Development and Sustainability (ERDS) Foundation takes schoolchildren into wild areas and teaches them about native biodiversity. Anxiety, people here say, can be managed when its causes are understood—when the right narrative is shared with patience rather than despair.
This column is from the January 1-15, 2026 special edition, Anxiety in a warming world, featuring exclusive interviews with Dia Mirza, Kalki Koechlin, Kiran Rao, Nila Madhab Panda, Sajana Sajeevan, Tsewang Chuskit, Manish Mehrotra and others, as well as columns by scientists, activists and journalists