The Better India · 1 day ago

To Stop Crop Raids, This Assam Village Grew 66 Acres of Food for Wild Elephants

When wild elephants began raiding crops in Assam's Hatikhuli Ronghang village, the conflict seemed to have no solution - only losers on both sides. But in 2018, conservationists asked a disarmingly simple question: what if, instead of driving the elephants away, villagers fed them? Farmers offered land, planted paddy and bananas and jackfruit across 66 acres, and then - with torchlight and patience - guided over 100 elephants to eat there while families harvested their own fields in peace. "We hated elephants because we believed they hated us," one villager recalls, and the quiet power of that past tense says everything. What Hatikhuli discovered is that fear, given room to change, can become something else entirely.