Good Morning everyone!!

Our Village Fieldwork Segment focused on, The Dangs which is the land of
Dandkaranya:
Lord Rama passed through here once and had Shabri's Ber in Shabri Dham.
The region is has its administrative headquaters in Ahwa where AKRSPI headquaters
are also present other important talukas are Waghai and Subir.
The wealth of Dangs is counted by the Teak or Sag Trees.
It is for them that British wanted to capture this in 1800s area but the
5 valiant Bhil Kings put a strong front forcing British to pull off a lease
agreement.

This gave way to annual Dang Darbar first held in 1894 where the kings
are honoured, riding in their horses to recieve their annual income
Teak or Sag is the a measure of wealth for the tribals who now have rights
to harvest them.

Next slide please.

The district has the Second-largest tribal population in India after the NE and
Languages spoken include Khandeshi, Gujarati, Bhili, Marathi, Hindi

After the 1972, Wildlife Protection Act several uprising took place in the Dangs
As the act denied them ownership rights to the protected forest areas
Some of these wrongs have been righted with the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
“The Act was a watershed in giving tribals the right to forest resources,”
the tribals who now have rights to harvest Teak or Sak

The major challenges in Dangs lie due to these reasons.

Conditional forest rights due to which there is distress of landlessness.
Irrigation issues as the Dangs despite being rainfed has a problem of
water retention due to high degree of soil erosion, high run off and
high silatation as well as low capacity usage of dams.

As you can see population density is 129 sq. km with tribal population being
94.65%. Then on,
As per Census 2011, the Dangs reported the second-highest sex ratio in Gujarat
The average literacy rate of the Dangs in 2011 was at 75.16%,
markedly better than the 59.65% it stood at in 2001.
In terms of gender too there was an improvement.

Additionally, The Dangs has a slowly growing Tourism sector with Hill stations like
Saputara and Don,
Waterfalls: Girmal and DiraDhod and natural attraction like Purna Wildlife
Sanctuary
& Waghai Botanical Gardens.

Next slide

The Dangs is one of the district where Aga Khan Rural Support Programme India is
currently
working on various livelihood and community interventions. As seen it was the
vision of his highness Aga Khan
which was established by Aga Khan Foundation in 1982.

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2010-12 saw the experimental phase of the AKRSPIs journey in The Dangs, between 13-
17 it expanded and from 18
onwards its focusing on Sustenance of the overall work through institutions and
Adding on livelihood models

Now Avantika will take over.