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As climate change reshapes forests in Madhya Pradesh, Gond and Korku wedding rituals are becoming harder to sustain

Pandhurna, Madhya Pradesh: When Chhabi Sirsam (32) needed sal wood for a ceremony after her marriage, she assumed the difficulty was because she had shifted to Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh – an urban area.

“In my community, this wood has special importance. But finding it was very difficult for us in the city,” Sirsam, a member of the Gond tribal community, said.

In her village Pendhoni of Pandhurna district, sal was easy to find. “It was specifically important for weddings. These occasions can’t happen without sal,” she said.

Sirsam thought not being able to find sal trees was a problem limited to urban spaces. She was wrong.

In villages across Madhya Pradesh, sal trees are disappearing: hit by rising temperatures, changing moisture levels and insect infestations linked to climate stress.

In Jhallar village in Harda district of the state, there is only one tree left, Sundiya Bai Dhurve (60) told 101Reporters.

Dhurve was picking up cow dung in the courtyard when her daughter-in-law asked, “Amma, will there be a wedding without sal wood?”

Dhurve replied, “How will it happen?...The sal has to be there. Without it, the wedding does not happen.”

“In a Gond wedding, first people go near the sal tree, worship it and bring a branch home. It is placed in the middle of the wedding manda [canopy under which the wedding is held],” she explained.

Though she does not recall her exact age, Dhurve is a repository of Gond wedding rituals. “Earlier, there were so many sal trees that there was no counting them,” she told 101Reporters. “Now only one is left.”

She does not know why the trees disappeared. “Maybe because we took more of it?” she said.

Locals from Jhallar village in Harda district of the state, there is only one tree left (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)\n

Forests under climate stress

According to reports, thousands of sal trees in Madhya Pradesh are drying up due to an outbreak of the sal heartwood borer in regions such as Dindori and Amarkantak. In some areas, 30-35% of sal trees are affected.

Scientific studies have linked the infestation to climatic factors such as temperature, relative humidity and rainfall. While higher temperatures increase the activity of the borer insect, lower soil moisture weakens the tree further, making it more vulnerable.

Harda district lies at the southern edge of the Satpura range and the Narmada valley. The region is better known for teak and sal has always been rarer here.

Sal forests are concentrated in eastern Madhya Pradesh—Rewa, Umaria, Anuppur, Balaghat, Mandla, Dindori and Jabalpur—covering just over four percent of the state’s forest area.

Threat to rituals

Dhurve told 101Reporters that she has seen sal in every wedding she attended since childhood. “It’s been part of our ancestors’ life and rituals,” she said. “Now only one tree is left.”

She visits the tree every day. “If we lose this last tree, we will have to travel deep into the forest to bring sal for weddings,” she said.

A Gond wedding manda usually requires a four- to five-foot-long sal pole. “Soon, we may have to manage with just a small branch,” Dhurve said.

Rambakas Irpache (40), a bhumka who conducts Gond weddings in Harda’s Guthania village, said, “When the manda is made, the most important wood is sal, placed exactly in the centre.”

Earlier, the entire mandas were built using sal. “Now it has become very difficult to get sal wood. Moini or mahua is used, but a small sal branch must still be brought…at least for support,” he said.

Vinod Kadam talking to the reporter about sal tree and weddings (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)\n

Vinod Kadam (30), the sarpanch of Jadkahu village, also pointed to a lone sal tree in his area about two kilometres from the settlement.

“This tree is important for weddings, but also for worship,” he said, explaining that the resin is burned like camphor during rituals, including aarti for chickenpox.

“After 2000, these trees became very few,” he said. “We try to plant sal, but seeds and saplings are not available.”

Storms have made survival harder. “Earlier, such windstorms did not come so often. In the last five years, they have increased a lot,” he said. “Sal is weak and flexible because of which it breaks easily.”

Studies show that soil moisture under sal trees is lower than in healthier forest patches, affecting regeneration. Heat stress disrupts flowering cycles and reduces seed quality, while long dry spells scorch saplings before they establish roots.

Shirish Kumar Chouriya, founder of Wild Routes Foundation, said abrupt temperature changes directly affect trees and seeds. “Species adapted to moderate climates cannot tolerate extreme heat or cold,” he said.

This is the reason that these species thrived in Central India, where the climate was relatively balanced.

Sudden spikes in temperature alter flowering cycles and reduce seed quality, affecting germination. After rainfall, prolonged dry spells combined with extreme heat often scorch young plants; even mature trees show damage, with new leaves burning in unusually hot summers.

At the other extreme, very low rainfall creates drought-like conditions, while excessive rainfall leads to flooding and increased moisture, raising the risk of fungal infections and disease.

The cumulative effect of these stresses is a gradual decline in plant survival, posing a long-term threat to biodiversity and ecological balance.

More than ecological loss

The disappearance of the sal tree is more than an ecological loss for Gond and Korku communities. It threatens rituals tied to marriage practices through which families share happiness and carry forward tradition.

Shobha Salame (64) explained that a sal sapling is planted in the house after someone gets married. “Only when the tree takes root is the wedding considered complete,” she said.

In Gond weddings, the woman first pays obeisance to the sal tree. A branch is brought home and placed at the centre of the manda. In folk tales, the sal is a symbol of divinity and the beginning of celebration.

Rambakas Irpache, who conducts weddings in Harda district, said the sal wood is placed in the middle of the manda on the day it is set up. “In this same manda, the bride and groom sit and perform the wedding rounds,” he said. Half the rounds take place at the groom’s home and half at the bride’s. After the rituals are complete, the same tree is planted in the courtyard.

Ramnaryan Kajle (40), from the Korku community in Guthania village, said the rituals followed by Gond and Korku families are the same. “When a wedding takes place, the sal tree is first worshipped by two people from outside the household,” he said. “Only after that is the tree cut. When it is brought home, it is worshipped again before being placed in the centre of the manda.”

In the days leading up to the wedding, women dance and sing around the sal tree, applying turmeric to it, marking a symbolic beginning rooted in nature.

It is believed that the faster and healthier the tree grows, the faster the family grows and remains happy. The tree stays in the courtyard until the family is considered complete and until children are born and life settles into stability.

As sal trees disappear from forests and villages, elders say weddings may still take place. But the rituals that once grew alongside the tree, slowly, deliberately, are becoming harder to sustain.

This project is supported by the Internews Earth Journalism Network with funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)

Cover photo - Sundiya Bai Dhurve from Jhallar village in Harda district (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)

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In Maharashtra, falling yields and unfulfilled insurance claims are pushing sweet lime growers deeper into debt and onto the streets in protest.

Nagpur Maharashtra: Last month, thousands of farmers poured onto the streets of Nagpur, demanding a loan waiver and assured minimum support prices (MSP). The protest ended after government intervention, with officials promising to address their demands.

Among those who joined on October 30 was Guneshwar Bande (45), a sweet lime farmer from Narasingi village, about 80 km from Nagpur. His reasons for being there run deeper than unpaid loans.

In 2023, Bande insured his crop under the government’s Restructured Weather-Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS), paying about Rs 5,000 as the annual premium. He expected roughly 50 tonnes of fruit that year. But after a storm and hailstorm last season, most of it fell prematurely, leaving him with only a fraction of the yield. When he filed a claim, the company responded that “our weather system did not record any hailstorm”.

Launched in 2016 by the Central government, Restructured Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (RWBCIS) aims to mitigate the likelihood of financial loss from anticipated crop loss resulting from adverse weather conditions relating to rainfall, temperature, wind, humidity etc. Unlike Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna, under which settlement of claims is made on the basis of shortfall in actual yield as compared to the threshold yield, RWBCIS calculates the compensation based on deviation from the defined weather parameters.

Bande never received compensation. “If a claim is rejected, we don’t get a message, nor do we know why. Even when we ask, no one tells us how compensation is calculated,” he said. “Sometimes Rs 10,000, sometimes Rs 5,000, sometimes nothing. The companies take money from the government, but it never reaches us.”

The insurance scheme, meant to protect insured farmers from weather losses, has become, for many, another broken promise.

Bande owns ten acres of farmland, all planted with sweet lime. His father grew oranges on the same land, but years of erratic rainfall and extreme heat pushed the family into debt. “Because of frequent weather changes, droughts, unseasonal rain, unpredictable heat, we kept slipping into debt with orange farming,” he said. “Later, in 2013, we tried soybean and cotton, but that too didn’t work. Then we thought of cultivating a crop that needed less water, so we started with sweet lime.”

An orange tree typically requires about 100 litres of water per day, while a sweet lime tree needs around 60 litres, roughly 40-50% less. The switch made sense in a region where groundwater levels are falling fast and summer temperatures often cross 45°C.

When this reporter first met Bande in April, the infamous Vidarbha heat was already at its peak. Even in early summer, his 10-acre orchard needed constant irrigation. The farm lies about two kilometres off the main road. Rows of trees stretch across open land, their sparse canopies barely filtering the sunlight. The black cotton soil, once fertile and moist, was cracked and hardened in the heat.

A deep well showing the declined water level (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)

At the front of the farm stands an 80-foot-deep well whose water level has sharply declined over the years. Most of the trees are sweet lime, with a few orange and guava trees scattered among them. The fruiting season, Mrug Bahar, had just ended then, leaving the trees mostly bare — except for a few shrivelled, pale yellow fruits still clinging to the branches.

The insurance scheme, meant to protect insured farmers from weather losses, has become, for many, another broken promise (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)

A region on the edge

Maharashtra is India’s second-largest producer of sweet lime after Andhra Pradesh. In 2023-24, the state produced 9.44 lakh tonnes across 1.92 lakh acres. The dry climate, low humidity, and moderate rainfall make regions like Vidarbha especially suitable for citrus cultivation. Unlike crops that depend on steady monsoon rain, sweet lime thrives in the region’s black cotton soil and semi-arid weather. These conditions help maintain its flavour and reduce the risk of fungal diseases.

But, Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region — spread across 97,950 sq km and 11 districts: Nagpur, Akola, Amravati, Bhandara, Buldhana, Chandrapur, Wardha, Gadchiroli, Gondia, Washim and Yavatmal — is now often facing extreme climate. Summer temperatures can reach 48°C, while the average annual rainfall is around 705 mm, far below the national average of 1,180 mm. Studies show that the region experienced droughts in 2002, 2004 and 2009, with conditions worsening after 2012. In 2021, rainfall dropped further to just 631 mm.

The 2019 drought destroyed nearly 60% of Vidarbha’s orange orchards, wiping out the Ambiya Bahar bloom and causing losses of around Rs 1,620 crore. Between 2017 and 2019, orange production declined by 50-70%. Rising heatwaves since then have further reduced yields.

Separately, citrus fruits generally grow best between 22°C and 34°C. For sweet lime, the ideal range is slightly broader, about 13°C to 37°C. When temperatures exceed this, photosynthesis and transpiration rates rise, cell membranes destabilise, and oxidative damage increases, affecting fruit size and quality.

Assistant Professor Dr. Sant Kumar at the Government Agriculture College in Chaurai said that climate change is disrupting citrus flowering cycles. “Now flowering happens in one season but not in the next,” he said, adding that the incidence of infections like citrus canker and wilt diseases has also increased.

Sweet lime once seemed the safer bet, needing less water and tolerating harsher conditions, but as the weather grows more erratic, even this crop is faltering.

RWBCIS calculates the compensation based on deviation from the defined weather parameters (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)

The broken promise

The RWBCIS was meant to shield farmers from such losses.

On January 1 this year, it was extended till 2025-26 with an outlay of Rs 69,515 crore. The scheme promises coverage against losses from natural disasters.

It covers 25 districts in Maharashtra, including Nagpur, and requires farmers to pay only 5% of the annual premium, with the rest shared by the state and central governments.

In theory, the scheme should compensate for weather damage but Bande said that insurance companies act arbitrarily and believes that since they are not answerable to the agriculture department they keep farmers like him in the dark.

That frustration, over failed crops, delayed payments, and vanishing compensation, is what drove farmers like him to Nagpur last month.

The black cotton soil, once fertile and moist, was cracked and hardened in the heat (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)

Data decoded

Numbers from the RWBCIS dashboard tell a clear story: farmers are steadily walking away from the scheme.

In 2018, over 1.15 lakh farmers in Maharashtra paid Rs 6,016 lakh in premiums, insuring crops worth Rs 1.2 lakh crore. Only half that amount, Rs 61,843 lakh, was paid out in claims.

By 2024, the number of insured farmers had dropped to 48,519. Premiums fell to Rs 2,166 lakh, and payouts to just Rs 5,896 lakh.

Nagpur mirrored this decline. In 2018, 2,387 farmers paid Rs 94 lakh in premiums and received Rs 915 lakh in claims. By 2024, only 753 remained in the scheme. They paid Rs 31 lakh and got nothing. Between 2018 and 2024, payouts were made only thrice.

When contacted, the Regional Head of the Pik Vima Scheme, Department of Agriculture, did not respond to calls or messages.

Farmers’ frustration

In Narasingi, farmer Paresh Bande says sweet lime cultivation has become a gamble. “First comes the fear of hail. Then, due to heat and water shortage, small fruits drop. If it rains too much, fungus spreads. Out of what looks like a good crop, only 20-30% survives,” he said.

Over the past decade, he added, weather patterns have completely changed. “Earlier, summers, rains and winters came on time. Now it rains in April or May, and we get dry spells in August. Farmers can’t tell if it’s summer or monsoon. This imbalance ruins crops.”

Paresh had hoped crop insurance would offer stability. “We thought it would work like vehicle insurance, where claims are settled quickly. But we keep paying premiums on trust and get nothing,” he said. Since 2020, he has paid Rs 12,000-Rs 15,000 but has not received a single rupee.

He suggested that farmers should get an SMS within 48 hours of filing a claim, stating whether it has been accepted or rejected. “When crops fail, a farmer has to spend it immediately. If a 2022 claim is settled in 2025, it’s useless,” he said.

Bande’s wife, Hemlata, who works alongside him, said the stress shows most at home. “Seeing my husband constantly worried takes a toll on me,” she said. “We want to give our son the best education possible. We are farmers, but we don’t want him to do this work. There is no financial security, no future here.”

Continuous losses, she said, hit children’s education the hardest. “If a child wants to be a doctor, it takes lakhs or crores. A farmer’s child can’t afford that. He has to choose another course.”

This project is supported by the Internews Earth Journalism Network with funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)\n\nCover photo - Farmers frustrated over failed crops, delayed payments, and vanishing compensation (Photo - Sayali Parate, 101Reporters)

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