06-bioresourcesstatu.. - M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation

I. Introduction
Malvan
Bio-resource inventory for the coastal region of
India has been presently launched. It has got
three major aspects, namely, the status, human
dependency, and sustainable development and/or
conservation. The first and foremost task is to
prepare the "Status report" for each of the coastal
sites selected for the present inventory. The status
report will present the scope of work to be taken
up and will help to plan the further programs/
activities of the project on Bio-resources.
There was a news in E-TV in Jan., 2002 that a
Tahsil Malvan from Sindhudurg district of
Maharashtra has a village by name 'Achra'. People
from this place leave the village (empty) for about
3-5 days for free wandering of the Ghost; with the
idea that if these 3-4 days are given to the Ghost,
he won't trouble people during their stay in the
village. There are three such villages from Malvan
Tahsil viz. Achra, Chindar and Varyangani. Such
is the site "Malvan".
The Tahsil is spread over 66.3 sq. km. It covers 136
villages and 772 wadis controlled by 63 Gram
Panchayats and one Nagar Parisad. There are 217
primary schools, 29 secondary schools, 1 B. Ed.
College, 1 Degree College. In addition there is one
63
Malvan
- L.J. Bhosale
Govt. Technical College School and 4 Urdu
Schools. There are 54 Co-op. Societies. The total
number of Bank branches is 14. The major sources
of income for the tahsil are agriculture,
horticulture, fishery and wages (labour). So long
as industry is concerned, tahsil has only cashew
factories.
The tahsil has potential for tourism also. Some of
the interesting places are: Sindhudurg Fort,
Bharatgad Fort, Dhamapur Lake, Rameswaram
Mandir, Tarkarli beach, Ozar (Ojhar) tali. Out of
these two places have been already chosen for
tourism development. viz; Dhamapur and
Anganewadi.
The data and information was mainly collected
from concerned offices such as Fishery
department, Government of Maharashtra;
Collectorate, Sindhudurg district; Statistics
department etc. The periodic/annual reports were
collected or referred on the spot and information
was noted. Visits to Malvan were made to gather
information from offices located at the place. Visit
was made to fish processing factory. Government
officials as well as other resource persons were
also approached. Frequent visits to sources of
information has led to the present set of data.