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In Part I of this series, we showed you why a clear definition for the Aravallis matters, by taking you to the village of Deepawas in Rajasthan’s Sikar district, along the lively green banks of the clear Girjan river. 

In Part 2, we brought you what activists predict can happen to the Girjan if its fate flows along the same lines as that of the Kasawati river near Kotputli-Behror, just 20 kilometres away. And why implementing existing regulations and protection are important for the Aravallis here.

Here, in Part 3, read about the health, social and economic worries that a small settlement in the Aravallis located in a mining and stone crushing belt is living through, and why any definition for the Aravallis has to be mindful of much.

Nareda (Rajasthan): Pale porcelain fields of mustard and wheat wait, ready for harvest, on a cool, clear February evening. A few hundred metres behind them, the dark silhouettes of short, scraggly hills of the Aravallis line the horizon. At the foothills hangs a distinct, light grey, oddly linear blanket of mist. But the people who live here – in Chotiya Ki Dhani near Nareda village in northeast Rajasthan’s Kotputli-Behror district – know better.

Forty-five year old Kausalya Meena’s eyes mist over.

“We tried our best,” she says, as low booming blasts punctuate the constant whirs of three stone crushers, just about 300 metres away on three sides of the settlement. “But we couldn’t save him.”

She hurriedly pulls her ghunghat over her face – she does not want her tears to be seen. This mist-like fine dust is what killed Kausalya’s husband, 48-year-old Laxmichand Meena, three months ago. Doctors said that he died of “TB” – tuberculosis – and “silicosis”, Kausalya says. Silicosis is not a word that comes easily to Kausalya, but she knows what it does. She has seen and felt its impacts for nine years as she tended to her husband’s worsening health: coughing, fatigue and weakness. Silicosis is a progressive lung disease, caused by inhaling silica – fine particles that are a common by-product in stone crushing. It has no cure. Silicosis can co-occur with TB, and mostly affects workers in the quarrying, manufacturing and construction industries. Laximchand Meena, however, was a farmer near whose home several stone crushing units sprung up.

Health issues – though one of the most pressing – are not the only worry that people in this landscape of forests, hills, fields, mines and stone crushers are living through. Groundwater levels have plummeted. Agricultural productivity is dipping. In landscape already fissured by scarred hillslopes, unliveable villages and intangible losses, the new definition for the Aravallis recommended by the Union environment ministry (that only hills higher than 100 metres above local relief will count as the hill range) could aggravate these concerns, pushing people and the Aravallis to a point of no return, experts say.

‘We are dying everyday’

At Chotiya Ki Dhani, residents say they cannot breathe. They are surrounded on three sides by stone crushing units.

Source: Google Maps, 2026. Chotiya Ki Dhani (27°44’35.9″N, 76°05’15.0″E) is marked in teal. The areas in grey around the settlement are stone mines and crushers.

Windows and doors are jammed due to thick layers of dust. Forty-six-year-old Rajinder Kumar Meena, a small farmer, runs his hands on the window sill of his house and holds them out for me to see. 

“See? This is after wiping it clean everyday,” he says, frustration and anger writ large on his face.

Rajinder Kumar Meena holds up his hands caked with dust after running his palm over his windowsill. Photo: Aathira Perinchery/The Wire. 

“We are dying everyday because of the dust and pollution,” says Mahinder Meena, another resident of Chotiya Ki Dhani. “The........

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