India, Dec. 11 -- Savannas in India are often hiding in plain sight. This open ecosystem has short grasses, scattered thorny trees, and drought-tolerant shrubs and cover nearly a tenth of India's land area and support pastoral communities, wildlife such as the Indian wolf, and Great Indian bustard, and more than 200 plant species found nowhere else.

Yet policy documents continue to call them "wastelands," or assume they were once forests stripped bare by people.

A new study published on November 25, 2025, in People and Nature challenges this long-standing belief using an unconventional archive: medieval Marathi literature. Conducted by Ashish N Nerlekar of Michigan State University and Digvijay Patil of IISER Pune, the research shows th...