Disquiet simmers among voters over exploited Aravallis

Right next to the village of Rela in the newly carved Kotputli district in the Aravalli range Rajasthan, a barren hill stands tall. A deep mining pit, cutting through its base, trails off into the distance. Inside, a bevy of heavy machinery is drilling through the tenuous slopes, and earthmovers are loading stones into trucks dotting the trenches. From this near unbreathable cloud of dust, these trucks emerge intermittently, stopping at a security gate for a brief minute, before making their way on a sandy two-lane road that leads to the state highway.

- Chetan Chauhan

RAJASTHAN POLLS - ON THE ELECTION TRAIL

Less than a kilometre away, in the habited part of the village, 80-year-old Kurasiram Gujjar coughs incessantly and curses the day mining began. He points to the hill, shorn of trees, and covered in a mining haze. “My father would tell me how wild animals would roam close to our village and he would accompany the British on their hunting expeditions. I curse the day we agreed to the mining, thinking it would change our fortunes,” Gujjar said.

The forests around Rela began degrading in the late 1990s, when illegal stone quarrying started, only to worsen when the area was officially leased out for mining in 2005. “Although we were promised economic prosperity, the mines have brought silicosis, crime and outsiders to our village of cattle grazers,” said Nathu Yadav, a second Rela resident.

Five kilometres away, at Chotiya Ki Dhani, where two stone crushers work round the clock, 65-year-old Geeta Devi, a silicosis patient said she has not had a sound sleep for days. “My husband and I used to work for eight to 10 hours a day in the mines to supplement our meagre farm incomes. But when doctors told me I would die because there is dust all over my lungs, I stopped working in the crusher. Now, it is this noise that will kill me,” Devi said.

These are not the stories of one or two families alone, but those of villages spread across the broken hills of the Aravallis, India’s oldest mountain range, spread across Alwar, Kotputli, Neem Ka Thana and Sikar districts of western Rajasthan, extending right to Kishangarh in Ajmer and Abu Road in Banswara. Accounts that may well be a factor in the crucial assembly elections later this week.

Politics in the Aravallis