Community participation in environmental governance remains a distant ideal in India. Illustrate with the case of Aravalli hill communities in Haryana and Rajasthan.

Q. Community participation in environmental governance remains a distant ideal in India. Illustrate with the case of Aravalli hill communities in Haryana and Rajasthan. (15 marks, 250-350 words)

Indian law promises participatory environmental governance — Article 243G with the Eleventh Schedule places social forestry and minor forest produce with panchayats, and EIA public hearings institutionalise local voice. The Aravalli mining dispute shows how thin this promise is in practice, though recent restoration efforts hint at a corrective.

Communities excluded from defining the resource - The uniform definition of an Aravalli hill — a landform rising 100 m above local relief, with hills within 500 m clustered into a range — emerged from a court-appointed expert committee using satellite mapping, not from consultation with hill villages [1]. - When the definition was contested, redress again stayed technocratic: the Supreme Court stayed its own order and constituted a fresh expert panel under the ICFRE Director General [2]. The arena was the courtroom and the committee, never the gram sabha.

Powerlessness at the extraction site - Ground reports from Jimrawat village, Nuh (Mewat), Haryana describe overloaded trucks passing every few minutes and residents unable to object for fear of a "mining mafia" [3] — a stark power asymmetry in a district among Haryana's most deprived. - Enforcement relies on drones, CCTV, weighbridges and district task forces [1] — state-centric surveillance, with no statutory complaint or veto channel for affected villages.

Restoration designed for communities, not with them - The Aravalli Green Wall Project greens a 5 km buffer across 29 districts in four states and promises employment, agroforestry and pasture development [4] — but villagers enter as beneficiaries, not co-decision-makers.

Participation in the Aravallis is thus consultative at best and absent at worst, because ecological questions have been framed as purely technical ones. The forthcoming Management Plan for Sustainable Mining [1] offers a corrective: mandate gram sabha consultation in its preparation, include panchayat representatives in district task forces, and route District Mineral Foundation funds to affected habitations. Only when hill communities become custodians rather than bystanders will Article 48-A's mandate, and the participatory ideal, be realised.

(~320 words)

Sources: 1. Aravalli Hills: Protecting Ecology and Ensuring Sustainable Development — PIB Factsheet — 100 m/500 m definition, mining prohibition zones, drone/CCTV/weighbridge enforcement, MPSM 2. SC stays its earlier judgement concerning change in definition of Aravalli Hills; SC forms expert committee to review report — Akashvani News (Prasar Bharati) — stay of the definition order and constitution of a fresh ICFRE-led expert committee 3. "The hills are shaken with the sound of machinery" — The Hindu, 3 January 2026, thehindu.com — Nuh/Mewat ground report on illegal quarrying and community fear 4. Shri Bhupender Yadav launches Aravalli Green Wall Project — PIB — 5 km buffer greening across 29 districts in four states, livelihood and agroforestry component