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Sikar (Rajasthan): The blue Girjan river snakes lazily past fields of wheat in the backdrop of the Aravallis and through the village of Deepawas in Rajasthan’s Sikar district.

Dainty black-winged stilts wade with their delicate, long ruby legs along its shallow marshy banks. Spot-billed ducks and comb ducks dot the deeper water tracts. The water is clear enough to reveal the dark green frilly fronds of aquatic plants as they move with the rhythm of the river.

“See how clear the water is,” says Maamraj Meena, a small farmer who lives in Deepawas. “The river gives us everything.”

The Girjan river passes through forest land, agricultural fields and homes in the village of Deepawas, Sikar district, Rajasthan. Photo: Aathira Perinchery/The Wire.

But Maamraj and other Deepawas residents are losing sleep over an iron ore mine that came up on the banks of the river in 2024. They’ve seen what mines have done to other rivers in the landscape, and know the worrying transformations the Girjan, and their now-productive lands, could undergo. The villagers were clear: they would not let the mine endanger their homes by felling trees, slicing up hills and polluting their river. They petitioned the Supreme Court. In response, the Rajasthan government finally agreed that the mine was located in an area defined as the Aravallis, as per a delineation by the Forest Survey of India in 2010.

The Aravallis: A lifeline 

The Aravalli range in Sikar district, Rajasthan. Photo: Aathira Perinchery/The Wire.

The Aravallis, meaning “line of peaks” in Sanskrit, are a long chain of short hills spread across around 30 districts in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. Considered to be one of the oldest fold-mountain systems of the world, it was formed in the Pre-Cambrian era dating back to about three-four billion years ago. This makes it much older than the Himalayas (though home to the world’s tallest peak, this mountain range is only about 40-50 million years old).

The Aravalli range in Sikar district, Rajasthan. Photo: Aathira Perinchery/The Wire. 

Across the 800-odd kilometres where they occur, the Aravallis are a lifeline for people and biodiversity alike. The hill range supports a diversity of wild habitats, flora, and fauna in protected areas including tiger reserves (such as dry deciduous forests of Sariska Tiger Reserve in Rajasthan), wildlife sanctuaries (like the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary in Delhi-Haryana), Ramsar sites like the Sambhar Lake near Jaipur (formed due to a natural depression in the Aravalli hill range), conservation reserves (like the Baleshwar Reserve in Rajasthan, just about an hour northeast of Nareda) and community-managed reserves like the orans (sacred groves). Wildlife that live in some of these areas........

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