On a rain-soaked July afternoon, Jitendra Dahrawal stretched wire along the edges of his 30-acre farm. His feet sank into the muddy ground. It had taken him a week to fence the land, a tiring, expensive job. He explained that it’s the only way to protect his crops and his life. “Whatever we are doing, we are doing for our safety,” he said.
His farm, nestled near the edge of the Pench Tiger Reserve, has become both a livelihood and a battleground. Protecting both his crops and himself has become essential for Dahrawal. He left a comfortable job as a design assistant manager in the packaging and printing industry, hoping for a peaceful life with his family. But things didn’t go as he had imagined. Farming didn’t challenge his skills; the human-tiger conflict made things difficult.
Now, Dahrawal spends his days stringing up electric fencing to defend against Pench’s mighty tigers. One by one, his farm workers quit, gripped by fear and anxiety over frequent tiger sightings and attacks. Dahrawal wants to sell his 27-year-old family farm land, which his father had bought decades ago, to resort developers.
This Sewan Kanhar village, in Kurai tehsil, of Seoni district, is about 40 km from the Tiger Reserve’s Sillari gate. The Tiger Reserve spans two states—Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. According to the last tiger census, Madhya Pradesh is home to 77 tigers, while Maharashtra has 48. Beyond its thriving tiger population are leopards, wild dogs, sloth bears, and other wild animals.
From Designer to Farmer
Dahrawal shares his journey in Hindi, often with a few words of English. He designed packaging for “some well-known Indian fast food brands.” His job took him to cities like Daman, Goa, and Nagpur, where he lived for 13 years with his wife and 11-year-old son. In October 2023, Dahrawal resigned “to do something for himself.” His hometown, Seoni, and his family welcomed him.
The family’s 30-acre land lies deep inside the forest, about 1.5 km from the main village. He farms rice in the kharif season and wheat in the rabi season. In 2024, the kharif season, he recalled: around 25 to 30 laborers were working on his field, transplanting rice saplings where young plants grown in nurseries for 20 to 30 days are manually shifted to the main field. “Suddenly, while they were working, a tiger roared nearby,” Dahrawal said. The terrified workers dropped everything and fled. None of them returned.
This season, Dahrawal turned to a more practical solution: direct seed sowing, a method that bypasses the nursery stage. It requires only about 10 laborers instead of the usual 25 to 30. But even finding that many was a challenge. With the help of just 4 to 5 laborers, he began sowing on July 23, well past the ideal window of June 20 to July 15. This delay could impact the entire crop cycle. He explained, “When we started sowing, rain had already come, so the field became wet. Sowing in wet soil affects seed germination by 30 to 40 percent. This affects per-acre production.”
Before sowing even began, Dahrawal struggled to find a tractor driver willing to prepare the field—fear of tigers kept them away, too. This shortage also drives up the cost of farming. Then, there are other losses too. Dahrawal explained, “If any signs of pests or diseases appear in the crops, it’s crucial to apply medicine immediately to control them.” But without enough laborers, this work gets delayed, increasing the risk of damage and loss.
If not tigers, leopard attacks had killed three out of his four dogs in the past eight months. The lone dog lives locked in an iron cage at night. Before this, with no one to take care of, he sold his 40 goats and 22 cattle.
Over the past two years, tiger sightings and attacks have become more frequent. He said that he has heard of a tiger attack every 15 to 20 days. Dahrawal now stays at a small house on his farm for four to five days a week, while his family continues to live in Seoni town.
A Roar in the Fields
Pench’s Maharashtra region is increasingly affected by human-wildlife conflict. Just a month before this report was written (in July), a farmer guarding his crops in the Seoni range, near the Pench Tiger Reserve, was killed in a tiger attack.
In October last year, 55-year-old farmer Sukram Guntu Saryam was killed by a tiger in the Pawani range of Nagpur district, about 40 kilometers away. He had been on his way to guard his rice and cotton crops. More recently, just two months ago, 18-year-old Gond tribal youth Sumit Pandre lost his life in a tiger attack barely 33 kilometers from Dahrawal’s village.
According to data presented in the Lok Sabha, between 2018 and 2022, 18 people in Madhya Pradesh died due to tiger attacks. The death number has stayed in single digits each year except 2020. But Jitendra’s fear isn’t just of tigers; any wild animal poses a threat. From 2020 to 2024, such attacks killed 395 people, injured 5,804, and claimed 72,627 cattle.
Yet for Jitendra and others, fear is shaped less by statistics and more by stories they’ve heard since childhood. While tourists spend money on safaris in Pench Tiger Reserve hoping to spot a tiger, Jitendra avoids places where sightings are reported. His pet dog, too fearful to even bark at strangers, circles them nervously. Jitendra carries the same fear, strong enough to make him want to sell his land and leave.
Rajnish Singh, Deputy Director of Pench Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh, said, “Earlier, there was grazing land between the main forest and the village. People used to collect firewood and grass for their cattle from there and then go back, without entering the forest. Wild animals that came out of the forest by mistake also found food there [grazing area]. But now this land is gone, and the village farms are right next to the forest.”
In October 2022, the bench of then Chief Justice Deepankar Datta and Justice Madhav Jamdar of the Bombay High Court had expressed concern over encroachment on Gairan land of Maharashtra. According to the affidavit filed by the state in the case, illegal constructions have been done on 2.2 lakh hectares out of 4.52 lakh hectares of such land.
Over-grazing has depleted fodder resources, so people venture into dense forests, explained Mandar Pingli, Deputy Director of Satpura Foundation. Pingli’s work focuses on reducing human-animal conflict and increasing the community’s role in wildlife conservation. The farming pattern has changed. We have two to three cropping seasons. This attracts herbivores– animals that feed on grass and plants. This, in turn, attracts animals like tigers and leopards.
Selling His Father’s Land: A Painful Choice
Before Dahrawal took over, his father farmed this land. In those days, Jitendra said, “If we needed six laborers, ten people would come asking for work. There was no fear of tigers back then, and no shortage of workers.”
Along the main road to Dahrawal’s land, close to the forest, there are several resorts. These accommodate the ever-increasing tourist footfall of the tiger reserve. Between 2019 and 2023, both tourist arrivals and safaris at Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra doubled. In 2019–20, around 53,000 visitors took 16,057 safaris, while in 2023–24 the numbers grew to 1.07 lakh tourists with 23,472 safaris. The number of tigers in Madhya Pradesh has increased in the past four years. From business logic, that’s good for resorts.
The changing realities are shaping Dahrawal’s decision. Against his emotions, he has considered selling the land. He said, “Local people here don’t have so much money that they can buy this land; in such a situation, resort builders are the most potential customers.”
He created seven ponds—each between 1 to 1.5 acres—across nine acres, with plans to continue farming on the remaining land. One of his long-term goals was to start farm tourism: to host visitors in a homestay and give them a firsthand experience of how villagers grow their crops. “Even if I bring the materials for construction, what’s the point if there’s no one to do the work? Everything will go to waste,” he said. Dahrawal’s vision of a fish farm and a homestay is on hold.
He hopes to buy a plot closer to the city. Somewhere to start over and build something new, but away from the fear and uncertainty.
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