Reviving the Tharparker cattle breed
Durjan Singh Soda remembers how, two decades ago, he used bullocks to plough his fields in village Minjrad in the Chohtal tehsil of Rajasthan's Barmer district, bordering Pakistan's Sindh province. "In this part of the Thar desert, it is much better to plough the fields with bullocks. The spacing of the seed is much better and nutritious grasses don't get uprooted,' he says. While this desiccated land spurns agriculture, nature has blessed it with highly nutritious grasses like sewan (Lasiurus sindicus). It is hardly surprising that it is also the native tract of one of the most celebrated cattle breeds of the sub-continent