Vidi Estate Accounts & Grazing Lease Register (Chotila, Saurashtra)

AR-011-0015

This 1998 Vidi register documents day-to-day financial administration and land-use decisions within a privately held Saurashtra grassland/forest estate (“vidi”), a locally used term for savanna/grassland tracts historically managed as estates and widely used by pastoralists for grazing, fodder access, and seasonal movement. Maintained by estate holders and currently held by Chhatrajeet Singh (manager since the 1970s), it records staff payments and appointments (including watchmen tasked with deterring illegal lopping, grazing, and hunting), routine maintenance expenditures, and grazing-related leases to Maldharis, alongside resulting receipts/profits-providing rare, grounded evidence of how private vidis were governed, monitored, and monetised, and how pastoral access was negotiated over time amid wider grassland change in Saurashtra.

circa 1998

Darbar Collections

Vidi Estate Accounts & Grazing Lease Register (Chotila, Saurashtra)