There was a time when forests were dense here. Today, travelling by train through district Alwar of Rajasthan, you will not see too many of them. They disappeared under the railway tracks, in the form of sleepers. In the 1930s, under the influence of the British, the then maharaja of Alwar took away community ownership of forests and sold them out to contractors to obtain timber for the railroad.

Railways did not improve the living conditions of the people in any significant way. On the other hand, as the rhythms of their rural lives were inveterately woven into the ecology, after they lost control over their common lands