Ecologies of Obfuscation: What's Happening to the Aravalli Hills?

This is the first of a two-part series on how policy confusion harms ecology in and around Gurgaon. Read part one, on the Najafgarh Jheel, here. 

The confusion surrounding the identification and notification of ecologies is not limited to water bodies. The Aravalli hills and forests, which run through Gurgaon and metabolise the region’s ecology, are also caught in labyrinthine legalese and administrative foot-dragging – similar to the issues revolving around the Najafgarh Jheel that we highlighted in Part 1 of this series.

The ambiguity in the definition of what constitutes a forest is not new, but amid an insatiable thirst to convert agricultural land, lakes, and forests into real estate, it has become a pressing concern. In the early 1990s, as India’s urban boom was taking off, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) issued the Aravalli Notification to keep the reckless urban development in check. While a step in the right direction, this notification proved short-sighted and generated confusion about the extent of the Aravalli hills and what constitutes a forest in Haryana. Initially, the 1992 Notification was applicable only to the Gurgaon and Alwar (in Rajasthan) districts, overlooking other districts of Haryana, including the Aravalli hills in the neighbouring district of Faridabad.

To address the question of what constitutes a forest, the Supreme Court, in a landmark verdict in the 1996 T.N. Godavarman Thirumulkpad vs. Union of India case, mandated that since the main goal of the 1980 Forest Conservation Act (FCA) is to curtail deforestation, the dictionary definition would suffice to define what a forest is and protect it irrespective of government or private ownership. This ruling introduced the concept of ‘deemed forests,’ referring to forest-like tracts not officially classified as such in government or revenue records but resembling forests in their characteristics. States were advised to identify deemed forests according to the dictionary definition. However, most states, barring a few like Madhya Pradesh, never came up with a definition and resisted the 1996 verdict. Haryana, the least forested state in India with only 3.62% legally recognised forest cover, has also ignored the Supreme Court’s decision for the past 27 years and has not arrived at a definition. Instead, the state authorities have exploited the ambiguity in revenue records and the 1992 Notification to limit the extent of the Aravalli hills only to the old Gurgaon district in Haryana.

In 2016, the National Capital Region Planning Board (NCRPB) issued directives to extend the 1992 Notification across the entire National Capital Region (NCR) and delineate the Aravallis as a Natural Conservation Zone. The NCRPB is responsible for coordinating urban planning and environmental protection in the entire NCR. However, Haryana once again ignored the directive and continued to classify land in the Aravallis as ‘Gair Mumkin Pahar’ (uncultivable hills), ‘Gair Mumkin Rada’ (foothills, pastures), ‘Gair Mumkin Behed’ (ravined foothills), ‘Banjad Beed’ (cultivable grassy foothills), or ‘Rundh’ (rocky areas between two hills) under the ‘yet to be decided’ category. The exercise to delineate forest in the Aravallis has remained incomplete, and the ‘yet to be decided’ categorization has created a productive confusion that bypasses existing environmental protections and opens up ‘deemed forests’ to real estate development. In the case of M. C. Mehta v. Union of India, the Supreme Court ruled that the Kant Enclave constructions in the Aravallis of Faridabad, Haryana, were illegal and unequivocally violated the notification issued on August 18, 1992. The court held the Haryana government accountable for its “conflicting” and “self-destructive,” stand despite affidavits filed by the Chief Secretary of Haryana supporting the Forest Department’s strong resistance in the matter.

Two recent developments further raise doubt about the state’s will to protect the Aravalli from encroachment and mining. First, in 2021, the Haryana government insisted that the NCRPB replace ‘Aravalli’ with ‘Hills and Mountains,’ and ‘Natural Conservation Zones’ (NCZ) with ‘Natural Zones’ (NZ) in the Draft Regional Plan-2041 for the NCR. These are consequential changes, as conservation is not mandatory in areas categorised as ‘Natural Zones,’ limiting it only to areas that are “notified for preservation or conservation under applicable Central or State laws and recognised as such in the land records” (Draft Regional Plan-2041 NCR 2021:19). Neelam Ahluwalia, a long-time environmental activist and co-founder of Aravalli Bachao Andolan (Save the Aravallis Citizens Movement), argues that these changes would devastate the region by threatening water security and worsening air pollution. Others point out that this reclassification could potentially open up 20,000 acres of the Aravalli that are awaiting notification in Haryana for construction and development under the new 2041 plan.

Second, in August 2023, the Government of India amended the 1980 Forest Conservation Act (FCA) by enacting the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act (FCAA). The 1980 FCA was an important legislation that curtailed deforestation over the preceding decades by mandating that prior approval be sought from the Union government to clear areas notified or recorded as forests by the states. The 2023 FCAA aimed to address the prevailing ambiguity about the definition of what constitutes a forest and which categories of forests must be protected, but it unfortunately added to the confusion and abrogated the 1996 Supreme Court order in no uncertain terms. Despite objections from over 400 environmentalists and researchers, the Amendment was hastily passed by Parliament. It has been described as ‘a death knell for the Forest Act’ and ‘an Act of Contention,’ as it restricts forest protection to areas officially declared as forests under the Indian Forest Act, 1927, or notified by state governments and union territory administrations since 1980, and excludes unclassed forest areas.

Bindra, a conservationist and one of the petitioners against the Amendment, argues that it undermines the primary objective of the 1980 FCA, which was aimed at ensuring forest conservation and checking deforestation. Shahabuddin and Sethi also argue that it reverses the gains made by the 1980 FCA and “whittles down protection for vast areas of India’s forests, threatening their very existence.” By removing safeguards for protecting India’s most biodiverse forests, the Amendment opens the door for converting large forest tracts to other land uses and extends the scope of activities allowed in the forest to include zoos and safaris.

Nature by design: Crafting desirable natures

Ironically, while the definitions and boundaries of a lake and a forest are being debated, in 2022, the Haryana government embarked on a project to create nature by design. In an ambitious three-phase eco-tourism project, the Haryana Tourism Corporation floated a tender to set up the world’s largest ‘curated safari’ in the Aravalli hills. As part of the compensatory afforestation scheme, the Tourism Corporation invited international design competitors to develop the Aravalli Safari Park in the districts of Gurgaon and Nuh and compensate for the tropical forests that have been cut down in the Greater Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, 2400 kilometres away. Large areas of the Aravalli, parts of which are protected under Sections 4 and 5 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA), or belong to village commons, or individuals, will be enclosed to accommodate big cats, amphibians, herbivores, birds, and, of course, tourists and trekkers.

The proposal to create a Zoo-Safari in the Aravallis is being hotly contested. The environmentalists argue that it will commercialise the hills and will be ecologically deleterious. Aravalli Bachao Andolan (Save the Aravalli Citizen Movement) has issued a position paper urging the Haryana government and the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change to cancel the proposed Aravalli safari project. The paper draws attention to the already denuded condition of the Aravallis, ravaged by mining, pollution, and rapidly depleting groundwater level and argues that the Park is guided by commercial interests and will only further degrade Aravalli’s rich biodiversity and precarious hydro-ecology. It makes several suggestions on how to ensure Aravalli’s biodiversity is protected and restored and recommends that the Zoo-Safari be scrapped in its present form and an independent study be conducted to evaluate how best to proceed forward.

In March 2024, when we visited Sakatpur, a predominantly Meo Muslim village, and Gairatpur Bas and Pandala, a cluster of predominantly Gujjar villages, the two villages whose land would be part of the Zoo safari, we were surprised by the paucity of information the villagers had about the park. A few of the villagers, mostly men, had heard about the Zoo Safari, but they claimed that there had not been any consultation or discussion about where it would be built and how it would impact them. Some of the villagers who had moved to the Gairatpur Bas from Sohna in the fifties were fearful that they would be displaced from their homesteads and agricultural fields. Others were concerned that they would not be compensated or if they would get employment in the Safari Park. There was also a concern that introducing big cats would endanger them and their dairy animals, which is a main source of livelihood for some. Since the area around the village has been declared to be a conservation zone where urban development is not permitted, the villagers demanded that their Shamlat-deh land be protected. While the villagers oppose the park, a former Sarpanch who spoke to Gururani on the phone, and wished to remain anonymous, said that the Park is being created in an area that was taken over by the Forest Department in 1992. He went on to add that the “Park would be good for the region. It would bring development and jobs” (March 09, 2024). Interestingly, the village community was split, and even a long-time community-based researcher activist was also in favour of the park as he felt that it was the only way to halt construction and protect the forest.

Safari Park may create clean, green, and aesthetically pleasing nature and generate revenue for the state, but projects like these are short-sighted and driven by revenue and feel-good nature. The conversion of the forests in Aravalli into a compensatory plantation, which is not known to work in Haryana and elsewhere, critics argue, poses an increased threat of ecosystem fragmentation and will have long-lasting deleterious impacts. While the state promises that these initiatives will help revive the local ecology and generate livelihoods, the lack of publicly shared details on how these projects will achieve their intended goals and the lack of stakeholder consultation raises questions about Haryana’s approach to conservation.

The global discourse and practice of conservation have come to acknowledge that conservation is possible only if local communities and groups who live off the land are included as collaborators and not as culprits. There have been calls to reconcile principles of equity with ecological well-being by collaborating with communities to achieve biodiversity conservation, yet, villagers, especially Meo Muslims and Gujjars, who are agro-pastoralists, are rarely consulted in the conservation efforts. Let alone consultation, as we found out during our fieldwork, there is palpable contempt and intolerance for agrarian lives and livelihoods. Those who live in villages and rely on cattle and land for their livelihoods, the small farmers, agro-pastoralists, and migrant workers, are considered to be uncouth, incompetent, and even dangerous by state officials as well as by middle-class environmental experts. This should not come as news to any reader who is even cursorily familiar with India’s deeply hierarchical social fabric. The prevailing sense is either they don’t care or understand, or they are greedy and short-sighted. If Haryana is serious about sustainability, restoration, and biodiversity, it will have to live up to its promises and forge meaningful partnerships not only with environmental experts, citizen groups, academics, but most importantly, with local villagers whose land and livelihoods are at stake.

The ball is in Haryana’s court

The Aravallis, as environmentalists who have tirelessly worked to protect it argue, must be protected at all costs. Fortunately, in February 2024, the Supreme Court made an ecologically conscientious decision that upheld the definition of a forest as specified in its 1996 judgment. The Court clarified that forest land could not be diverted for safaris or zoos without prior approval. To hold state authorities accountable, the Court also directed the Central Government to make the State Expert Committee (SEC) reports on deemed forests public and ensure that these forest tracts that have been recorded will be protected under the FCAA. This ruling offers a ray of hope for an environment otherwise beleaguered by land mafias, real estate, and construction companies.

We don’t have the luxury of time to play games with nature. Short-sighted approaches to curating sanitized versions of nature that serve few while erasing social-ecological relations of land and livelihood without putting questions of ecological sustainability front and center in urban plans will not yield meaningful results. Given the climatic challenges, now is not the time to weaken or undermine existing environmental protections that exist in the Regional Plan-2021 for NCR. As environmental groups urge, it is time to take immediate measures, designate the Aravallis a biosphere reserve, and draft an ecologically meaningful policy that can ensure the survival of forests, rivers with their tributaries and flood plains, irrespective of the fact they are considered natural or man-made.

Recently, in May 2024, after years of stalling, Haryana’s Forest Department, for the first time, agreed to establish a definition of a forest. Based on the Supreme Court’s directive, Haryana will override the definition of the forest in 2023 FCAA and identify areas of 5 hectares or more with continuous forest-like attributes as ‘deemed forest.’ This new definition would include various categories of forests endemic to the region, such as the sub-tropical thorny forests of the Aravallis, tropical dry deciduous forests, and subtropical pine forests. While the assessment of Haryana’s forest cover based on this definition awaits state approval, adopting a broad definition that includes unclassed forests is a step in the right direction. Additionally, the Supreme Court has formed a committee comprising the heads of the forest departments from four states—Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, and representatives from the MoEFCC, and other relevant agencies. This committee is tasked with developing a unified definition of the Aravallis, and the Supreme Court will hear their inputs on July 31, 2024. With the legal backing from the Supreme Court and the support of environmental experts, we can only hope that Haryana state authorities will do their best to move past the confusions and address the environmental challenges now.

Shubhra Gururani teaches in the Department of Anthropology at York University, Canada. 

 Shruti Nikhar is an architect and researcher whose work focuses on climate resilience and environmental sustainability.

The research was supported by the SSHRC-Funded research project, Life and Death of Urban Nature in India.

Read part one of this series here.