‘We don’t feel the need to migrate’: A village tackles an invasive species, helps people stay home

In Madhya Pradesh’s Mandla district, villagers have toiled for years to uproot the invasive Lantana camara – a process that not only revived forests and farms, but also helped people make a living at home 

Aishwarya Mohanty

Yashoda Dhurwey gets ready to uproot lantana, an invasive weed that has taken over agricultural and grazing land in Manikpur Pal village. Aishwarya Mohanty/The Migration Story

MANDLA, MADHYA PRADESH: “When I was a child, I was always intrigued by these yellow, red, white and purple flowers with aromatic leaves. But when I accompanied my parents or grandparents to graze our cattle, they wouldn’t eat them. We knew something was wrong,” said Yashoda Dhurwey, 28, pointing to a thicket with these flowers on the periphery of her village, Manikpur Mal in central India.

This village, in the Kanha Tiger Reserve’s buffer zone in eastern Madhya Pradesh, has learnt to uproot these same flowers, leaves and stems in order to survive.

Called baramaasi or ramphool locally, this invasive weed species is Lantana camara, an ornamental plant brought to India by the British two centuries ago, which in recent decades, swallowed large stretches of forest and farmland across central India.

“The forest right next to us provided in abundance at one time. Wild fruits, mushrooms, seeds… we could collect them and sell them in the markets nearby. But that reduced over time,” Dhurwey said, describing the lantana invasion.

She instinctively knew, as did her animals, that lantana was not meant for their land. Over two decades, she saw how it suppressed the growth of native plants and crops, how it degraded the soil, and how this affected her family’s income and that of others dependent on the forest and farming. It reduced their access to wild edible foods, made grazing lands disappear and daily movement unsafe as wild animals would hide in lantana’s big, thorny bushes. Village incomes dropped and young men started to migrate to the cities for work.

However, in 2012, villagers across Mandla, especially women, decided to take matters into their own hands. They revived the tradition of shram daan (voluntary labour) and learned to uproot this invasive weed. Over the last six years, Dhurwey’s family was among more than 17,000 people from 146 villages, who uprooted entire stretches of lantana, enabling wild foods to grow and farms to become fertile. And something else started to shift too: men who had once migrated out of compulsion now found reasons to stay on in their villages and make a living at home.

Livelihoods uprooted by lantana

Before the villagers started uprooting this invasive weed, however, their forest- and farm-based livelihoods had already been uprooted. They were forced to tackle lantana’s takeover of their landscape and find new ways to survive. The weed’s reach was so widespread that six of the 10 acres Dhurwey’s family’s owned, were covered in it – and almost every member of her joint family of 15 was forced to migrate for work. 

“My parents-in-law talk about how they used to sell forest and agricultural produce to make a living. This was nearly two decades ago. Slowly, as lantana took over, my in-laws, husband and his older brother started migrating. I, too, migrated with my husband and children to Nagpur, where he worked at a tile company for years,” she told The Migration Story.

On the road to Manikpur Mal, dotted lantana flowers cover entire stretches of land on both sides. Over the past two decades, Dhurwey has seen this weed spread thick across fields and forest land, both in her marital and her villages. 

With the lantana removal and the revival of forest produce and crops, Dhurwey’s husband stopped migrating in 2024. Still, she recalls with sadness how the slow and steady spread of lantana led to the steady migration of her family and people from her village. “As we lost access to forest produce and our farms got covered with lantana, people had no option but to leave,” she recalled.

When forests began to disappear

Women in Orai village crush lantana’s thick, thorny stems to weed it out from the roots and reclaim land for farming and grazing. Aishwarya Mohanty/The Migration Story

Long before Mandla’s men and women packed their bags for Nagpur, Pune or Sikkim, a quieter departure was taking place in its forests on the edges of the Kanha Tiger Reserve in eastern Madhya Pradesh. Often dubbed the ‘Tiger State of India’, M.P. draws attention for its big cat population – the highest in the country – but the slow collapse on its forest floor, on which both wildlife and villages depend, has mostly gone unnoticed.

“The spread of lantana causes severe forest degradation, increases human-animal conflict and disrupts natural species distribution,” said Amitha K.B., Deputy Director, Kanha Tiger Reserve (Buffer Zone). “It does not allow native plants to grow freely, which further weakens the ecosystem.”

Lantana has other disastrous effects too. “Lantana invasion impedes the growth of established native plants, restricts sprouting of new plants, fuels fires and causes canopy burns,” said Rajat Rastogi, a PhD scholar at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, who is studying the impacts of this invasive species in central India.

“Lantana has a significant impact on species diversity and abundance, reducing the available forage [for animals], but its presence also alters the feeding habits of herbivores. This, with time, might cause the local extinction of plants and even a dietary shift in the feeding habits of herbivores,” he added.

Weeding out an invasive species

In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, villagers in different parts of Mandla came together to uproot the lantana infestation. “Earlier, we would only cut the lantana instead of uprooting it, but we realised that this did not stop it from growing back,” said Devki Uikey in a discussion with fellow villagers from Manikpur Mal.

The uprooting was done after the monsoon because the weed, like any other plant, grows fast and matures during the rainy season, and identifying its thickets afterwards is much easier. “After the monsoon, wherever you look, you only see lantana. So, we usually begin uprooting it after the full bloom.”

Villagers had noticed that their crop yields were dropping and their livestock was suffering because farms and pastures were covered in lantana. They approached the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), a non-profit working in Mandla and Balaghat districts, including in the Kanha National Park, for help. The organisation did a local study and came up with the idea of weeding out lantana from the roots, so that no seeds were left behind and the weed wouldn’t grow again.

The lantana removal initiative, which involves various steps, is now supported by FES and the forest department.

People usually work in groups of four to uproot a single, fully grown lantana plant. Here’s why: it is around five-to-six feet tall, has thick and hard stems (that sometimes get entangled), curved thorns and deep roots. Those uprooting it use a large log as a lever, tie it to the plant’s base, and push and pull with all their might till the roots give way. Once uprooted, the weed is turned upside down to prevent it from re-germinating or pollinating the soil.

“For every acre of land, nearly 50 people are needed daily [to do the uprooting]. A single piece of land needs dedicated efforts for at least three consecutive years to ensure that the plant doesn’t grow back,” Uikey added. 

The uprooted lantana is then collected, dried, burned and converted into biochar, a nutrient-rich substance that improves soil health. In some places, the hard lantana stems are also used for fencing or roofing. But lantana cannot be uprooted without permissions – villagers must approach the forest department and the village panchayat to work on lands in forests or villages. They must also submit an application to these bodies, and a resolution giving permission has to be passed in the gram sabha. 

Resurgence of forest produce

Foraged foods (left) started to grow once the land was cleared of lantana. Usha Jharia (right) shows off the mushroom that returned to Orai village. Aishwarya Mohanty/The Migration Story

Since 2018, 8,849 square kilometers of land have been cleared of lantana infestation across Mandla district through collaborative effort of the people, FES and the forest department. The most noticeable change in the local ecosystem has been the return of native plants and traditional foods. As a result, villagers have been able to access non-timber forest produce once more and earn an income from foraging traditional foods like wild mushrooms, chakoda ke beej or seeds of a wild leguminous plant (Cassia tora), and a berry-like fruit karonda (Carissa carandas).

These are only some of the native plants and traditional foods that started growing again. “Palash, amla, tendu, mahua, harada, behada, peehri, karonda have all slowly returned,” said Jagruti Marabi, 50, from Muala Saini village, around 10 kilometres from Manikpur Mal.

But what stood out prominently was the return of something deceptively small: the tendu or Indian ebony leaf (Diospyros melonoxylon), which is used to make beedis or Indian cigarettes. In fact, Madhya Pradesh accounts for nearly 25% of tendu leaves production in the country, the highest in the country, with an average annual production of around 25 lakh standard bags. Tendu leaves are procured directly by the forest department through phadis (tendu leaves collection centres) and sometimes, through private contractors.

“Earlier, fully grown tendu trees were inaccessible and covered with lantana. We did not even realise there were tendu plants underneath as they were not visible. Even if we tried entering the bushes, we could get hurt by thorns or attacked by animals who hide in these thick [lantana] bushes,” Marabi added.

After the systematic uprooting of lantana, however, tendu bushes emerged from underneath the overpowering weed, their foliage thickening within a season. And they could be harvested now. “Because of lantana, we had to walk longer distances to collect tendu leaves,” Marabi recalled. But this has changed now and “the tendu season is short but gives good returns,” she said. 

Now that they don’t have to travel as far to pick the leaves, more women are collecting them and have got tendu leaf cards in their own names too. These cards authorise them to legally collect the leaves and ensure that the income they make goes directly into their bank accounts. In Orai village, for instance, nearly 102 women now have tendu leaf cards.

The number of tendu leaf collectors had also gone down, and they barely managed to gather 100 bundles a day. (Each bundle contains 50 leaves.) But now, the capacity of these collectors has more than doubled. “In the previous season, three members of my family collected 1,800 bundles of tendu leaves in less than a week,” Marabi said. As each bundle is sold for 4 rupees, her family members made 7,200 rupees that week. 

For others, the ease of access to tendu leaves has encouraged them to take up forest-based livelihoods again. For instance, Usha Jharia’s husband migrated to different cities in Maharashtra for contractual labour work and returned home only once a year for a few days. But he no longer does this. “One person can easily earn 3,000 rupees in a week by picking the leaves,” said Jharia, 36. “More the family members, more the income. So, why would someone migrate?” 

But life in the village wasn’t always easy. “We could hardly collect any plants or sell them [with the lantana invasion]. The summer months were for tendu and mahua, but the roots of our trees were covered. The other seasons are for agriculture, but our lands, too, were partly covered by lantana. So whatever we could grow was used mostly by the household. There was not enough to sell and make a living,” Jharia told The Migration Story.

But the resurgence of forest produce closer to their villages did help them earn time. “I remember how we started foraging in the forest at 5 am and returned only by 12 noon. Now we leave at 7 and are back by 10 am, and the collection is also better. This gives us more time for other chores and also to look after ourselves,” she added.

Reclaimed lands bring crops back

Since 2022, Dhurwey’s family has managed to uproot lantana from six acres of their land and could cultivate on the entire 10 acres. They re-introduced kodo and kutki (millets popular in eastern M.P.) on their farm and earned 50,000 rupees in their first season. With wheat and flaxseed, their annual earnings now touch 2 lakh rupees. 

“Kodo and kutki were our traditional crops, which we could grow on very undulated lands and with very limited water. But as lantana spread, we hardly had enough land to grow our millets. But our land has started to yield again. Now we cultivate enough to grow and sell as well,” Dhurwey said. Her husband has not left the village to migrate for work in the last two years.

“We do not feel the need to migrate anymore. We had to move to the cities because there was no livelihood opportunity here. But now there is, and agriculture for us is like a family activity in which everyone gets involved. So neither is there any need nor is there any time to migrate. We feel sufficient in our village,” she said. 

In Chichari village, farming has become easier – and profitable too. Earlier, Pushpa Armo’s husband used to migrate to work at a pharmaceutical unit in Sikkim and would send 10,000 rupees home every month. Their four acres of agricultural land were practically useless – three were swallowed by lantana and on the one remaining acre, they grew paddy but it was routinely destroyed by wild boars.

After uprooting lantana and restoring the field though, the family began cultivating millets and started earning fifty to sixty thousand rupees a year. Armo’s husband still works as a mason on contract in the nearest town to supplement their income. “He may earn less now,” Armo said, “but at least he comes home every night.”

Yashoda’s family, who uprooted lantana from their land, now cultivate millets on it, and her husband (right) no longer has to migrate for work. Aishwarya Mohanty/The Migration Story

Sustaining the efforts

Keeping lantana from coming back needs steady effort over three years. Uprooting happens in the first year and the next two years are spent removing any new plants that may have sprouted from leftover seeds. Experts feel that a stronger, long-term policy is necessary to manage the problem.

“Lantana has many adaptive strategies that make it resistant to management – any type of above-ground cutting or burning results in the production of more shoots. Common and abundant fruit-eating birds like bulbuls can easily bring back seeds into managed areas from nearby source plants,” said Dr. Geeta Ramaswami, a plant ecologist whose PhD looked closely at Lantana camara, its spread and the lantana-native plants interaction.

“Since there is so much lantana in India, our limited resources and largely mechanical ways of removal often fall short, given the scale of this ecological issue,” she added.

There is also an absence of coherent policy for invasive species, Rastogi said. “We require a multi-sector approach as invasive species’ impacts extend beyond biodiversity – they threaten agriculture, human health, water resources and local economies. Yet, our policies are often designed in silos, making them inefficient and unsustainable.”

Lanata was brought to India by the British in 1807 as an ornamental plant for the National Botanical Garden in Calcutta and around the same time, for use as a hedge plant in the city. Though there is no official data on the extent of its spread, studies suggest that it has invaded most Indian pasturelands (13.2 million hectares) and 44% of India’s forests.

There have been sporadic interventions by state governments to manage the lantana spread, specifically in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, mostly through the uprooting method. Though Madhya Pradesh has no specific policy for lantana removal, forest officials in the Kanha Tiger Reserve work with Eco-Development Committees (EDCs; community groups set up under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972) to remove this invasive weed.

“We try to remove it with forest department funds and also through EDCs. Usually, the community pinpoints the areas they want cleared and then submit proposals. People who participate [in the removal] are paid by the EDCs, which have certain funds allocated to them by the forest department for village-level development activities. The area [for clearing] varies every year,” Amitha K.B. explained.

Dhurwey, too, emphasised the collaborative nature of this exercise and the need for support from the forest department. “Now that we have seen the benefits of removing lantana, we want to reclaim the rest of our lost land in the coming years. But the effort has to be collective and consistent. Since each patch needs to be worked on for three consecutive years, we need continued support,” she said. 

As the thickets of lantana are uprooted and native plants reappear in the forests and villages, Mandla’s migration story is being rewritten with the stubborn collective labour of its villagers. The forest that once turned people away is opening up to them again. And after years of living elsewhere, families are finding a reason to not to leave. "I don't wish to leave my village to work somewhere else again, nor do I want anyone from my family to do so," Dhurwey said, resolute in her decision to stay at home.

Edited by Subuhi Jiwani

Aishwarya Mohanty is a special correspondent with The Migration Story.

The author has researched this story as part of the Promise of Commons Fellowship