A Socio-Economic Narrative of Sumar Ram Ji’s Khadin, Ekalpaar, Jaisalmer
Author: Ramesh Beniwal
“पहले हम दूसरों के खेतों में मजदूरी करते थे। अब अपने खड़ीन में काम करते हैं।” “Earlier, we worked as labourers on other people’s fields. Today, we work on our own Khadin1.”
There are conversations that remain confined to a notebook, and then there are conversations that quietly unsettle everything one has learnt in a classroom. My interaction with Sumar Ram Ji, a 59-year-old farmer from Mohabbata Ram Bhil Ki Dhani2 in Ekalpaar village, Jaisalmer, belongs to the second kind.
Sumar Ram ji’s story begins with a sarhad (border). His father crossed over from Pakistan during Partition, one among the countless sharṇārthī (refugees) who arrived in this stretch of the Thar carrying little more than memory and the will to start again.
Displacement is often written about only in terms of loss — land left behind, homes abandoned — but for families like his, it also meant arriving somewhere with nothing, and having to build an entire livelihood from a landscape that owed them nothing in return. His father became, in effect, a khetihar shramik (agricultural labourer) on land that was never his own — not because he lacked skill or will, but because a family rebuilding itself after punarvaas (rehabilitation) rarely gets to choose its own ground. The desert did not soften itself simply because a family had already lost so much once before. If anything, it demanded the same patience twice over — first to survive displacement, then to survive the land itself.
It is against this backdrop that Sumar Ram ji’s own sentence carries a second, deeper layer of meaning. When he says his family once worked as labourers on other people’s fields, he isn’t only describing a lack of irrigation or a dry Khadin — he is describing a family that, generation after generation, kept finding itself tilling land that belonged to someone else, whether because of a border redrawn overnight or a monsoon that never stayed. As part of an ongoing socio-economic study on the impact of traditional Khadins in the villages of Ramgarh Block, I arrived expecting to document crops, production, livestock, and household income. Instead, I found myself listening to a story that runs from a refugee father’s arrival on this land, to a son finally working a field that is, in every sense, his own.
In development economics, livelihood transformation is usually measured through income, productivity, employment, or asset ownership. Yet villages describe change through very different indicators — a farmer speaks of the first year he manages a winter crop; a shepherd counts the growth of his herd rather than his bank balance; a woman notices that her family no longer leaves the village after the monsoon in search of work. These are the indicators that never make it into economic models, but they are the ones that reveal how rural households actually experience development.
The Ledger Before the Rains: A Family Bound to Other Men’s Fields
The Khadin that Sumar Ram ji cultivates today spreads across approximately 70 bighas. Though the structure has existed for more than thirty years, it was reconstructed just two years ago through the efforts of Sambhaav Trust, which introduced two critical components into its design — a Naala3 and a Chadar4. These are often described merely as engineering elements, but their significance runs far deeper. The Naala directs monsoon runoff efficiently into the Khadin’s catchment; the Chadar safely releases excess water in years of heavier rainfall, protecting the earthen embankment — the Dhora5 — from collapse. Together, they enhance the landscape’s ability to hold on to moisture, an intervention whose effects ripple outward from the field into the entire household economy.
Today, the Khadin is farmed collectively by Sumar Ram ji and his three sons — Ganesh Ram, Jugla Ram, and Daya Ram. For a family whose ancestors arrived here as refugees with no land of their own, this is no small fact — family labour, once spent as khetihar agricultural labour on someone else’s land, is now invested entirely in their own.
To understand why this matters, one has to understand the years before it. The family always owned agricultural land — ownership was never quite the problem. Beneath the surface lies a layer of Multani clay, roughly 4 to 5 feet below the topsoil, capable of retaining moisture for one to two months after rainfall. But the upper soil layer dried rapidly after tillage, making winter cultivation an act of gambling rather than farming. Under these conditions, the agricultural calendar stayed locked into the Kharif season alone. Guar, moong, moth, and til were grown because they could survive on comparatively little water, while gram, mustard, and wheat remained either impossible or dangerously risky. Every season demanded seed, labour, and time — and every season, the land often dried before the crop could mature. Farming, in that world, was an act of mehnat aur sabr (persistence and patience), not profitability.
The consequences reached well beyond the field. Because agriculture couldn’t sustain the family through the year, they regularly turned to wage labour elsewhere — a pattern their own displacement history had already taught them too well. Sumar Ram ji worked in house construction during the off-season; at other times, the family laboured on larger Murba lands owned by others. Their own land existed — but it could not yet employ them.
This distinction matters because it challenges a common assumption in rural development: that migration and outside labour are driven only by landlessness. In Ekalpaar, the family had land. What they lacked was the ecological foundation to make that land productive. The absence of moisture translated directly into the absence of local employment. So the journey from wage labour back to self-cultivation isn’t just an economic upgrade — for a family whose roots here begin with a refugee’s arrival, it is nothing less than the swavlamban (self-reliance) their father never fully got to claim.
Notably, when the conversation turns to prosperity, Sumar Ram ji speaks of livestock before income — and that ordering is itself revealing. In the villages of western Rajasthan, livestock functions simultaneously as savings, insurance, manure, draft power, and livelihood. Before reconstruction, the household owned only 15–20 sheep and goats, a number capped hard by limited fodder. Crop residues weren’t enough, grazing was unpredictable, and buying fodder from the market strained the household budget further. Today, the family maintains nearly 80–90 sheep and goats — a transformation made possible because the Khadin now produces enough biomass to support a much larger herd. Even so, fodder management remains a carefully calculated economic activity: gram fodder costs around ₹250 per sack, while guar fodder ranges between ₹800 and ₹900 per quintal, prompting the family to buy and store well ahead of scarcity.
Perhaps the most remarkable change after reconstruction isn’t visible in production statistics at all — it’s visible in confidence. Earlier, every decision was shadowed by uncertainty. Today, the family still grows its traditional Kharif crops — guar, moong, moth, til — but has gradually expanded into gram, mustard, wheat, methi, dhania, and local wheat varieties during Rabi. That diversification reflects something larger than shifting crop preference; it reflects a renewed faith in the land’s ability to support investment. Development, in this telling, begins long before income rises. It begins the moment a farmer believes the coming season is worth preparing for.
A Desert That Learned to Keep a Promise
“खड़ीन बनने के बाद हमें पहली बार लगा कि जमीन हमें वापस कुछ दे सकती है।”
“After the Khadin was built, for the first time, we felt the land could give something back to us.”
As Sumar Ram ji walks his Khadin, he doesn’t describe it in hectares or soil classifications. He points at patches of the field and recalls, almost sentence by sentence, what each corner produced across different years. In a landscape where the monsoon is never guaranteed, farming becomes an ongoing negotiation between soil, water, and patience. The reconstruction didn’t erase uncertainty — it changed the family’s relationship with it. Earlier, every season began with doubt. Today, every season begins with planning.
The production record from recent years captures both the promise and the limits of farming in the Thar Desert. In 2024, Sumar Ram Ji cultivated gram on nearly 7–8 bighas, harvesting roughly 15 sacks of mustard, while the wheat crop dried out entirely due to insufficient rainfall. On another patch, moong grown over 4–5 bighas yielded only around 30 kilograms — a reminder that even within a single year, different crops respond to moisture stress in wildly different ways. The following season brought its own test: rainfall in 2025 stayed below expectations, yet the family still harvested nearly 25 sacks of guar. In ordinary dryland conditions, a year like that could have meant total agricultural loss. Instead, the Khadin retained just enough moisture to secure a partial harvest. In desert agriculture, resilience matters more than record output.
What’s perhaps most striking about Sumar Ram ji’s farming isn’t what he grows, but how. There are no chemical fertilisers in his fields at all. Agriculture here still runs on traditional organic farming, sustained entirely by farmyard/cow-dung manure6 generated from the household’s own livestock. Gram, guar, moong, moth, matira, and kachariya are all grown this way — not for premium markets or certification labels, but because the farming system itself evolved around local resources. The logic is circular and elegant: livestock produce manure → manure nourishes soil → nourished soil retains moisture → moisture supports crops.
The numbers around livestock only sharpen this picture. Before reconstruction, the household’s 15–20 animals represented a hard ceiling set by fodder scarcity. Today’s 80–90 sheep and goats have made livestock one of the most dependable pillars of the household economy. According to Sumar Ram Ji, livestock alone now contributes nearly ₹1,20,000 annually, while Kharif agriculture generates close to ₹1,00,000 in a favourable season. This single comparison reveals something important about desert livelihoods: prosperity rarely comes from agriculture alone.
Managing a herd this size demands constant foresight. Fodder is bought whenever local supply runs short — at ₹250 per sack for gram fodder and ₹800–900 per quintal for guar fodder. Agricultural investment has grown correspondingly. The family now spends ₹70,000–80,000 on Kharif cultivation and an additional ₹40,000–50,000 on Rabi. Seed costs alone are considerable: gram requires nearly 9–10 kilograms of seed per bigha, while guar consumes roughly 70–80 kilograms per murba — almost a full quintal. Last year, Chatar Singh Ji’s support with guar seed eased part of this burden. These are not just line items in a farm budget — they are proof of a quiet transformation: families that once hesitated to invest in their own land are now committing serious money to it. Confidence, once again, shows up not as emotion, but as an economic decision.
The benefits of the Khadin reach well past the cultivated field. Walking along the Dhora, Sumar Ram Ji explains that the embankment is now nearly 15 percent stronger than it was right after reconstruction — and human effort only started that process; nature finished it. Wind-blown sand gradually built up along the structure, native grasses took root, and local seeds carried in on desert winds began to sprout. What followed was almost a natural vriksharopan (afforestation / tree-plantation) — without a single sapling being deliberately planted by hand. Today, Khejri aur Ker saplings have emerged inside the Khadin, many reaching nearly 8 feet in height within 3–4 years. Their roots bind the soil, reduce erosion, and reinforce the embankment further. Birds, too, have started returning — drawn by vegetation, insects, seeds, and the water that lingers after the monsoon. Ecological restoration here isn’t a side effect of the Khadin; it’s part of the Khadin’s own maintenance system.
Livelihoods have diversified in unexpected directions too. Last season, Sumar Ram ji collected wild toomba7 fruits growing naturally inside the Khadin, extracted the seeds, and sold them in the local market — while the leftover biomass served as fodder. Income like this almost never shows up in official agricultural statistics. But for rural households, these supplementary incomes often provide crucial financial cushioning, especially in years of weak rainfall.
As the conversation nears its end, Sumar Ram Ji points toward neighbouring fields where other farmers have started discussing building Khadins of their own. No government official told them to. No formal awareness campaign is running. They have simply watched. In villages like Ekalpaar, development spreads not only through institutions, but through observation.
What the Balance Sheet Doesn’t Show
“अगर पानी रुक जाए, तो गाँव रुक जाता है। अगर पानी चला जाए, तो आदमी भी चला जाता है।”
“If water stops and stays, the village stops and stays. If water leaves, the man leaves too.”
By the time our conversation reaches its final stretch, it becomes clear that Sumar Ram ji’s story cannot be told through crop yields or annual income alone. Those figures matter — but they explain only one layer of the transformation. The deeper changes are the ones that unfold quietly, over years: the confidence with which a farmer now invests in his own land, the return of native vegetation, an earthen embankment strengthening itself, and — perhaps most tellingly — neighboring farmers beginning to imagine a different future for their own fields. For a family descended from refugees, this quiet, decades-long climb from agricultural laborer to independent cultivator is its own kind of second migration — not across a border this time, but across generations.
One of the first questions I put to Sumar Ram ji is about the economics of cultivation itself. Dryland farming is often assumed to be cheap, simply because there’s no large irrigation infrastructure involved. The truth is the opposite. Every season demands heavy financial commitment before a single crop even emerges from the soil. ₹70,000–80,000 goes into Kharif cultivation, and another ₹40,000–50,000 into Rabi. Seed alone eats up a large share of this — 9–10 kg per bigha for gram, and nearly 70–80 kg per murba for guar. These numbers tell us that farming in the Thar isn’t defined by low investment — it’s defined by high risk. Every rupee spent before the monsoon is an act of faith that rain will arrive, stay, and carry the crop through to harvest.
Labour has undergone its own quiet reversal. The same family that once depended entirely on wage labour to survive now employs labourers from neighbouring areas during harvest season. The family that once travelled to someone else’s Murba land in search of work now generates work on its own fields — a full-circle reversal that, for this family, closes a loop opened generations ago at Partition. Rural development is often discussed purely in terms of “employment generation” — yet in villages like Ekalpaar, the most meaningful achievement may simply be that a household no longer has to leave its own land to find work.
Despite all this, Sumar Ram ji is careful not to describe his journey as finished. Every improvement reveals a new challenge in its place. Even with the reconstructed Khadin significantly improving moisture retention8, the topsoil still dries rapidly after tillage. This is the real nature of desert farming: there is no final victory here, only continuous adaptation.
The Last Word Belongs to the Land
Sumar Ram Ji’s story leaves us with a lesson development economics rarely teaches directly: that progress lives not only in numbers, but in belief, time, and relationships. A single Khadin across 70 bighas did more than redirect rainwater — it reshaped an entire family’s labour, self-belief, and imagination of the future. The journey from 15–20 to 80–90 animals, from agricultural labourer to independent cultivator, and from a bare Dhora to one now alive with returning vegetation and birds — together, these tell us that ecology and economics were never separate stories.
Summary
For a family whose ancestors crossed a border with nothing, and whose father spent his life labouring on land that belonged to others, Sumar Ram Ji’s Khadin is not just an irrigation structure. It is the closing of a very long chapter — one that began with displacement and ends, two generations later, with a son standing on his own 70 bighas, watching his own sons work beside him. And perhaps the most beautiful part of all this is that the change didn’t arrive through a government order. Neighbouring farmers simply watched — and now they are talking about building Khadins of their own. One successful Khadin quietly becomes another farmer’s reason to believe — and that belief, more than any single harvest, is Sumar Ram ji’s real legacy.
Footnotes
- A traditional rainwater harvesting system of western Rajasthan that captures monsoon runoff behind an earthen embankment, allowing moisture to be retained for crop cultivation. ↩︎
- A small hamlet or scattered settlement consisting of a few households, common in western Rajasthan. ↩︎
- A channel constructed to direct rainwater runoff efficiently into the Khadin catchment area. ↩︎
- A spillway or overflow structure that safely releases excess water and prevents damage to the Khadin embankment. ↩︎
- The earthen embankment or bund that forms the boundary of a Khadin and helps retain water and soil moisture. ↩︎
- Organic manure prepared from cattle dung and other livestock waste, traditionally used to maintain soil fertility in rainfed farming systems. ↩︎
- A wild desert gourd whose seeds are often sold in local markets while the remaining biomass is used as animal fodder. ↩︎
- The ability of soil to hold water after rainfall, a critical factor determining agricultural productivity in arid environments. ↩︎
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Chatar Singh Ji for guiding me through the field and for helping me understand the realities of village life and rural economics through his own experiences and conversations with local families. His insights greatly shaped this narrative and my understanding of the stories that lie beyond numbers.
All photographs accompanying this essay were taken by the author during the course of fieldwork.
This article was written by Ramesh during his internship with Sambhaav Trust in 2026. To explore more work by Ramesh, click here.