Aravallis, trust deficit, and the cost of half-measures

The battle over the Aravallis is a test of India’s commitment to ecological survival over short-term gains

The Aravalli hills have stood for nearly two billion years, silently shaping the subcontinent’s climate, ecology, and civilisation. Today, they stand at the centre of an extraordinary public backlash, with massive protests sweeping across Rajasthan, Haryana, and the National Capital Region, triggered by a recent Supreme Court order on the definition of the Aravalli hills, specifically in the context of regulating mining in the range.

To dismiss this unrest as a misunderstanding of technical definitions or judicial nuance is to miss the larger, more uncomfortable truth; this is a protest born of deep erosion of trust in both the Indian government and the institutions meant to protect the environment.

The Aravallis are not just another landscape up for regulatory fine-tuning. Stretching nearly 650-km from Delhi to Gujarat, they are India’s oldest mountain range and one of its most critical ecological shields. They arrest the eastward march of the Thar Desert, recharge aquifers that sustain cities and farms, stabilise local climates, and give birth to rivers such as the Chambal and Sabarmati. Their destruction over the past four decades, through rampant quarrying, stone crushing, and sand mining, much of it illegal, has already translated into toxic air, vanishing groundwater, and fractured habitats.

Against this backdrop, the Supreme Court’s November order was framed as a calibrated, science-led response that includes a uniform definition of the Aravalli hills and ranges, a freeze on new mining leases until a Management Plan for Sustainable Mining (MPSM) is prepared, and continued operation of existing mines under tighter regulation. On paper, the order is detailed, even commendable in parts; however, it has ignited distrust because people have seen this story before, and it rarely ends well.

For decades, the environment ministry’s rules restricting mining in the Aravallis have been flagrantly violated. State governments have routinely diluted protections, turned a blind eye to illegal mining syndicates, and regularised environmental crimes after the fact. Even the Supreme Court’s 2009 blanket ban on mining in parts of Haryana was steadily hollowed out on the ground. When institutions fail repeatedly, citizens stop reading the fine print and focus instead on outcomes, i.e. who benefits, who loses, and who pays the ecological price.

The flashpoint this time is the court’s acceptance of a definition that identifies the Aravalli hills as landforms rising 100 metres or more above local relief. While the committee and government insist that supporting slopes, valleys, and ranges within 500 metres are also protected, the public fear is neither irrational nor uninformed. In landscapes as old and eroded as the Aravallis, ecological value does not neatly correspond to elevation. Low hills, gentle slopes, and shallow valleys are often the most crucial recharge zones and wildlife corridors. To many communities, the 100-metre threshold feels less like a scientific safeguard and more like a legal sieve through which mining can eventually seep.

This is where trust collapses into protest. The judiciary argues, not without reason, that total bans breed illegal mining mafias. The government promises drones, surveillance, and sustainable mining. Yet people living around the Aravallis have watched illegal quarrying flourish under the noses of regulators, police, and forest departments. They have seen ‘scientific’ plans become bureaucratic cover for business-as-usual extraction. In such a context, assurances ring hollow.

There is also a deeper philosophical question the protests are forcing us to confront, which is, should an ecosystem as ancient, fragile, and nationally significant as the Aravallis be subjected to mining at all? The apex court rightly acknowledges India’s international commitments under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. It also recognises the range as a continuous geological ridge, not a collection of isolated hills. Yet, it stops short of granting the Aravallis what they arguably need most, an unequivocal, blanket protection.

The Centre’s much-touted Aravalli Green Wall project and the promise of a future management plan for sustainable mining (MPSM) cannot compensate for the immediate risk of fragmentation. Once the hills are blasted, aquifers punctured, and corridors broken, no restoration plan can truly put them back together. Ecological carrying capacity, after all, is not infinitely elastic.

If trust is to be rebuilt in the judiciary, in environmental governance, and in the idea that development does not mean ecological suicide, then half-measures will not suffice. The only credible path forward is the full withdrawal of the current order and its replacement with a new one that grants blanket protection to the entire Aravalli range, across states, elevations, and landforms. No mining. No exceptions dressed up as sustainability. No plans that depend on present destruction.

The Aravallis have protected north India for millennia. The question before us is stark: can our institutions protect the Aravallis, decisively and without ambiguity, for the generations yet to come?

(Shailendra Yashwant is a researcher covering forests, wildlife and the environmental politics shaping conservation and land use in South Asia. X: @shaibaba)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.