 Until half a century ago, Dathya was surrounded by dense deciduous forests, full of chinkaras, blue bulls and even tigers. In fact, in the new palace of Dathya, there hangs a picture of Raja Gobind Singh, a renowned hunter, surrounded by 162 tiger skins. The image of the hunter warrior has lost its romance in our times, but it does confirm the presence of dense forests around Dathya, the forests have gone. Instead, the hills around Dathya present an unredeemed panorama of barrenness. But why did the forest disappear? The reasons are manifold and complex. With the transfer of the forest to the forest department, the emotional links between the people and the forests were broken. As the roads linked the local community to the ever expanding urban economy, the exploitation of the forest resources was no longer limited by the local needs. It was driven by the needs of the urban markets. Need was replaced by greed. In India, the government has been concerned about the vanishing forests and expanding wastelands for quite some time. To deal with this problem on the revenue lands, the government of India constituted a wasteland development board a few years ago. On the forest lands, the problem is still being tackled by the forest department. The main interest of the forest department is to produce timber for commercial exploitation. Therefore, this method results in monoculture plantations which do not meet the needs of fodder and firewood of the local people. It was in this background that a retired Air Force officer, Air Vice Marshal S. Sahani, hailing from Bundelkhand, appeared on the scene in Dathya in 1987. Sahani knew that the traditional method of forest regeneration was not a solution for the wastelands around Dathya. He began to experiment with the technique of natural regeneration. The key to the natural regeneration of forests lay in the survival of the roots lying dormant beneath the soil, waiting to sprout. The forest had disappeared in recent memory and Sahani believed that large tracts of land around Dathya would still have the root stock of trees. In 1985, the National Remote Sensing Agency had estimated that of the total geographical area of India, 16.2% was wasteland. A detailed district-wise study was carried out by this agency seven years later. According to this study, of the total area of 2038 square kilometers of Dathya district, 623.6 square kilometers of 30.6% was wasteland. A large part of this wasteland falls in that category, which once had a tree cover and thus perhaps still has root stock. To help the root stock to sprout, obviously the first step was to improve the moisture conservation in the soil. Fortunately, Dathya already had a long tradition of conservation of water in situ and of protecting groundwater sources. In fact, the practice of protecting water sources is also followed in the other dry regions of India, such as Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat. Therefore, Sahani's idea of conserving water in situ was built on a tradition of local wisdom. After the very first rainy season, the annual grasses such as Tridex, Dinanath and Aristida emerged. After completing their life cycle, these annual grasses paved the way for perennial grasses from the second year, such as Dicanthian, Hermaphogan, Hettropogan, Chrysophogan and a local grass called Sen or Sahima. Once grasses got established, the soil erosion was automatically controlled and the retention of moisture in the soil was prolonged. The conditions thus became ripe for the root stock to sprout. The Dathya experiment is obviously successful, but what is the cost of development? The estimated cost of all the earthwork and watchmen in the first two years was 3,500 rupees or about 100 US dollars per hectare. The maintenance cost now is only the salary of a few watchmen. The roots of Dathya do need an improved soil and moisture regime, but they also need people's support and care. Only when these two elements combined would the technique of natural regeneration become replicable and self-sustaining.