4 min readJun 17, 2026 06:35 AM IST
First published on: Jun 17, 2026 at 06:35 AM IST
The Aravalli is old. Older than the Himalaya, older than our arguments, older than our institutions and those who run them. It has survived glaciations, tectonic upheavals, and centuries of illegal mining. It did not, however, anticipate being improved.
Earlier this month, a leading Rajasthan newspaper ran a Sunday “positive” story about a plan by the forest department to plant saplings on rocky forest land through a technique called “double blasting”. The hard, stony ground of the Aravallis — ground that has been hard and stony for approximately 1.5 billion years and is rather settled in its ways — will be blasted — twice — so that the earth becomes crumbly. And then a plant will be put in the resulting crater. The plant, presumably, will grow. Greenery will ensue. Rajasthan’s 5,476 sq km of rocky forest will be transformed. The numbers will be issued. The paperwork will be filed with satisfaction.
My father, naturalist Raza H Tehsin, who spent a lifetime in these landscapes, finds this plan remarkable. Not because it is bad science (that it is) but because it so perfectly captures our relationship with nature: We love it so much that we must slash and overpower it first.
Double blasting is an engineering technique for breaking extremely hard rock — the kind that illegal miners have long cast longing looks at. You drill deep, you detonate in controlled stages, the rock fractures, the rubble crumbles. And then (here is the masterstroke) you plant something. The disturbed soil, we are told, will hold moisture longer. The roots will spread. Greenery will flourish where earlier there was only stubborn geological permanence.
That stubborn geological permanence is itself alive. Pradip Krishen writes in a recent article about the destruction of biocrusts — those thin, living skins of cyanobacteria, fungi, lichens and mosses that crust over rocky and arid soils. Science has only recently begun to grasp their importance: They fix nitrogen, stabilise soil, retain moisture, hold the whole fragile surface together. In Delhi, Krishen warns, the “restoration” of the Central Ridge is destroying these very crusts in the name of greening. Natural history writer Pranay Lal has written about how Delhi’s Forest Department had specified a banned pesticide in its tender to “restore” the Central Ridge — not to heal it, but to theme-park it. There are 1-2 million ants and 7 million earthworms for every human on Earth. And this is not counting the biocrust. That is the kind of help we need to keep the Earth and soil going.
Rajasthan’s Forest Department has, it seems, not read either piece. Or, it has responded with a harrumph — it knows what it’s doing. The blasting has been pitched as a pilot project covering about 5,000 sq km. If the pilot succeeds, if the saplings survive, if the numbers look good, if the press release lands well, there will be more blasting.
And yet, the basics remain this: If you fence a rocky patch, protect it from grazing, woodcutting and illegal mining, the vegetation belonging to that land will return by itself. It always does. The Aravalli, even in its most degraded patches, carries an ecological memory. Dhok, khair, ber, the tenacious grasses: They come back, given half a chance and a functioning fence. They don’t need dynamite. They need us to stop. Blasting a landscape for its own benefit is something only we could think of. The Aravalli is 1.5 billion years old, and the secret of its longevity is not a formula our dadi told us about.
What happened to the time India took pride in worshipping nature? Those evening sessions of elders under a banyan tree, rolling the first roti for a bird, a deity associated with every hill and stream and forest? The culture that claimed nature as its god has discovered a new one — pilot projects with good PR. The saplings may or may not survive. The press release will.
Tehsin, former honorary wildlife warden, Udaipur, is the author, most recently, of The Great Indian Safari
An aerial view of Aravalli Range (Express Photo) 
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