There are two ways to legally get a loan from a bank. One, apply for a loan with your credentials, balance sheet, profit and loss statement, statement of assets, etc. If these are not good enough, then one can take the second route- buy off the bank and award yourself a loan. The Indian govt. has adopted this second route in the matter of assessment of its performance on various parameters where it has demonstrably performed miserably according to global agencies- Environmental performance, Equality, Democracy, Press Freedom, Independence of the judiciary, Pollution, Hunger, Corruption, to mention just a few. Even on GDP the IMF has stated that it does not trust the govt's gaudily rose-tinted picture! So Delhi has now decided to abandon these purveyors of unfavourable ratings and to start its own system of ratings. We shall see how that pans out in due course.
Every piece of data, however, - empirical, scientific, satelite based- shows that we fully deserve our miserable ranking in the Environmental Performance index. We are at 176 out of 180 countries, and consistently declining every year- we were at 155 in 2014. Reaching these depths has not been easy- we have been working hard at it for the last 11 years in order to award a bunch of crony capitalists unlimited access to the nation's natural wealth. But that is not the only sad part; the real tragedy is that the higher judiciary has looked the other way-if not facilitated- this continental scale of vandalism and provided its seal of approval to much of this environmental depredation.
It was not always so. People of my vintage can remember the 90's and first decade of this millenium when Apex court judges like Justice Kirpal and Justice Ahmadi stood like a wall, shielding the country's natural environment- its rivers, forests, mountains, air- from the excesses of the executive, strictly interpreting and implementing the laws meant to protect them. For instance, I dare not even imagine what our environment would have been like today if it had not been for the path-breaking judgment in the TN Godavarman case in 1996. And they did this by relying on science and invoking the "precautionary principle" which mandates that if an activity poses a threat of serious or irreversible damage to the environment or human health, preemptive protective action should be taken even if there's no full scientific certainty about the risk, shifting the burden of proof to those arguing the activity is safe. They rooted this principle in Article 21 of the Constitution which is a guarantee of a healthy and dignified life. The mess we are in today is because our higher judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court, has abandoned these principles and finds it more convenient to go along with the government whose core ideology is based on an anti-scientific temper. The judicial principles which rule today are the doctrines of "reward the criminal", "accept the fait accompli", "ignore the science", and "accept sealed envelopes and curated SITs".
This trend of ignoring the science first became noticeable with the twisted logic in the Ram Mandir judgment where architectural and historical evidence were jettisoned in favour of faith and religious bias. It has since become routine in cases like the SDP 41 (Shimla Development Plan 2041) which was approved inspite of concerns of experts that it would demolish the city's 17 Green belts, permit multi-storey structures in a highly seismic zone, and was rejected by the NGT; firecrackers case (so-called "green" crackers being allowed even though they emit 70% of the pollutants that the regular ones do); the stray dogs case (in which global practices, experts, voluntary organisations, even the existing law, were ignored); the Char Dham highway project (where 'security' was allowed to trump geological science); the Vanshakti case where the basic, well established principle of "polluter pays" was turned on its head to "pay and pollute" in order to legalise illegalities. The Aravalli judgment of December 2025 is a continuation of this pernicious trend, though the most shocking, given that it was delivered at a time when the whole NCR was being asphyxiated in the most deadly shroud of pollution seen in decades. The irony of the judgment being delivered on World Mountain Day too could not be ignored.
The adverse effects of this judgment are by now too well known and documented to be repeated here. Suffice it to say that it would fragment the range into thousands of isolated pockets and render the Indo-Gangetic plain, perhaps the most polluted region in the world, completely uninhabitable due to depleted water tables, rapid desertification, increased temperatures and dust pollution. It is inexplicable why the SC chose to reinstate the 100 meter height formula which it had rejected in 2010. It failed to appreciate that the most important ecological services of a mountain system are provided, not by the peaks, but by its lower formations- the troughs, ravines, valleys, foothills- which trap the rainfall, store the moisture, enable the growth of green cover which traps dust and regulates temperature. The SC's order would ensure that mining of these areas would turn the plains into a desert.
The most sensible word on this appalling judgment comes from Mr. Harish Salve in a recent interview on Republic TV. He says he finds no reasoning given by the court for ignoring the recommendations of the Amicus Curiae, Empowered Committee, GSI and FSI to go by the 3* slope criteria, and instead adopting the MOEF's 100 meter matrix. The Aravallis are not a collection of hills of varying heights, they are a 2 billion old eco-system so there was absolutely no need to define them in vertical terms. Every mountain range has contours of varying heights, and each is as important as the other; they cannot be sliced into a thousand fragments based on height, and parts of them opened up for mining.
One cannot but agree with Mr. Salve that the court has lost its way in being side tracked into the vertical argument. The first requirement is to determine (not define) what constitutes the Aravallis in spatial (not vertical) terms, as it existed for thousands of years, not in its present form where legal and illegal mining of 10 million tonnes every year has denuded vast parts of it. Salve is of the view that the court should adopt the Godavarman definition of a "deemed" forest for the entire Aravallis (i.e.: even a denuded area, if it was once a forest, shall be deemed to be a forest for the purposes of protection under the FCA). The aerial spread of the entire range should be mapped by satellite imagery, classified as an Eco-sensitive zone under the Environment Protection Act and declared a NO-GO area for any exploitative purposes, including mining and real estate. All existing mining leases should be cancelled and all approvals given for buildings (resorts, farmhouses, real estate development) should be revoked. Special police teams should be constituted to ruthlessly stamp out the illegal mining mafia- mere registration of illegal mining cases has served no purpose so far, with 17000 cases registered in Rajasthan alone, I believe., where one third of the Aravalli hills have already been levelled! CAMPA funds should then be utilised for re-afforesting its mined out/denuded parts.
To me, it appears that the Court was, unfortunately, more inclined to go along with the government in opening up the Aravallis for legal mining rather than in protecting this ancient range. But its reasoning, or whatever little of it one can discern, is faulty and unscientific: the apprehension of illegal mining cannot be used as an excuse for expanding legal mining in a fragile and eco-sensitive zone (while the illegal mining, under the patronage politicians and bureaucrats, continues unabated). The illogical 100 meters criteria would only give the mining mafia an incentive for surreptitiously cutting down all the hills to below that height so as to get a free hand for mining them legally. The deleterious effects of excavating these ranges, the oldest in the world, are similar, whether legal or illegal, and this is the science the court has ignored. What is required is not an SMP (Sustainable Mining Plan) but an SCP (Sustainable Conservation Plan).
It is encouraging to note that the court has now stayed this regressive order on the 29th December. One now hopes that it will listen to the experts, heed the science behind the environment, not dismember the range for the convenience of mining, and declare the entire Aravallis an Eco-Sensitive Zone. 30% of these precious mountains have already been plundered and lost, it is incumbent on the court to protect what remains and hand it down to future generations as its singular legacy. This is one time when, in the words of Justice Robert H Jackson, it has to be both infallible and final.
