Our last description is a brilliant study conducted jointly by an Indian biologist and an anthropologist in the early eighties to explain the hereditary monopoly of certain occupations from an ecosystem perspective. The work was done by Madhav Gadgil and Kailash Malhotra through their intensive fieldwork in the Maharashtra state in western India. The study revealed that seven hereditary caste groups like Kunbi, Gavli, Hatkar, Tirumal Nandiwallas, Fulmali Nandiwallas, Vaidus and Phasepardhis pursued their respective traditional occupations in a wide area without conflict and competition by using specific technologies and natural resource base. According to Gadgil and Malhotra, these caste groups depended much on the natural resources in such a manner that each one of them survived in their own ecological niche without encroaching the niche of the other caste group, although some of them lived in the same geographical area. The authors termed this specialised zone specific habitation of the caste groups as “resource partitioning” which often led to the monopoly of even a clan or lineage of a particular caste. But along with “resource partitioning”, there also existed a kind of symbiotic relation between the different castes living in adjacent regions. Thus the Kunbis lived in the lower valleys and practiced cereal cultivation while the Gavlis were cattle herders who lived on the upper hill terraces of the western ghat. The Kunbis supplied cereals to Gavlis and in exchange received butter from the latter. More interestingly, the three non-pastoral nomadic caste groups (Tirumal Nandiwallas, Vaidus and Phasepardhis), though practised hunting differed markedly in terms of game animals and implements, which minimised competition among them. Gadgil and Malhotra finally observed that with the advent of colonialism the traditional resource base of these castes collapsed and as a result conflict among the caste groups began to take place and the caste system in the region became maladaptive (Gadgil and Malhotra, 1983)