MARGAO, April 12 -- Team Herald

In Goa's forested hinterlands, between mist-covered foothills and shaded plateaus, lives a community whose rhythms are set not by clocks but by rain clouds and grass. The Dhangars-traditional pastoralists and millet cultivators-have for generations lived in sync with the terrain, moving with their livestock through the lush but rugged corridors of the Western Ghats.

Their way of life, built on rain-fed millets and cattle herding, is a model of ecological wisdom. "It's a culture shaped by generations of living with the land and adapting to its constraints," says Ruchika Tiku, an environmental science researcher at Goa University, whose Goa Water Stories project explores the socio-ecological traditions of G...