New Delhi, Dec. 30 -- The ongoing controversy over how to define the Aravalli range, on which India's Supreme Court (SC) weighed in nearly six weeks ago but is currently re-evaluating its stance, is a classic example of the conflict between development and ecological wisdom.

Bad air around the National Capital Region (NCR), flanked by these hills to its southwest, adds to what's at stake.

Ideally, the definition adopted on 20 November by the SC at the urging of the ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEFCC) should be abandoned in favour of one laid down in 2010 by the Forest Survey of India (FSI).

This would help preserve the Aravalli hills, which are among the planet's oldest fold-mountain formations, having got fold...