Sanjay Krishan, 51, cannot decide whether to make the trip to his laundromat in Chotta Shimla from his home in New Shimla, about 4 km away, on foot or by car. “It’s a daily dilemma,” he says. “If I take my car, I fear getting stuck for 40 minutes. If I walk, I fear getting mowed down by a vehicle.” He compromises sometimes, taking a walk at 7 a.m. and opening his shop as early as 8 a.m., to avoid the traffic. He has neighbours like Ellerslie House where the secretariat functions from.
Rapid, unregulated urbanisation has put the vital resources of colonial hill stations like Shimla and Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh, and Mussoorie and Nainital, in Uttarakhand, under immense stress. Tourists are often left wondering how to beat the traffic to and in the hills, and the administration in these towns weighed down with city problems, debating where they’ll go from here. Parking woes, water shortages, haphazard construction, and rising pollution are all part of the urban problems they’re encountering — except here, the roads are narrow and paths steep, making problem-solving that much tougher.
Once a town of walkers, Shimla, the State’s capital that was once the summer capital of the British in India, designed for 25,000 people, is now overrun with vehicles and a population of over 3 lakh, as per State government estimates. Mr. Krishan, who was born and bred here, moved to the suburb created in the 1990s, when India suddenly began to aspire to shiny, new things, with the economy opening up.
Aspirations and opportunity have cumulatively led to the current predicament, where earlier this month 550 cars, illegally parked on the narrow mountain roadside, were towed away. “This year we are seeing 15%-20% more vehicles arrive in Shimla against previous years. We are attempting to make all roads free from abandoned and parked vehicles,” says Sanjeev Kumar Gandhi, Shimla’s Superintendent of Police. The hill town has a floating population of about 75,000 people daily, going up to 1 lakh in peak season.
In May alone, with the onset of school summer vacation and the heat in the plains, about 11 lakh vehicles entered and exited. Over 1 lakh vehicles are registered in Shimla with close to 35,000 commuting daily and about 15,000 vehicles from outside entering the town daily. The town has a parking capacity of just around 4,500 vehicles, which includes demarcated parking spaces along roads. The woods of cedar, pine, oak, and rhododendron recede into the background against the magnitude of the infrastructural problem.
Shimla, once the summer capital of the British in India and designed for 25,000 people, is now overrun with vehicles and a population of over 3 lakh. | Photo Credit: Naresh Kumar
Rambling growth
Birender Singh Malhans, 84, an environmentalist and former member of the Heritage Advisory Committee of Himachal Pradesh, says the rising traffic congestion is only a part of the larger set of problems that the town is facing. “Shimla and other hill stations have been known as urban forests, but are now turning into urban slums,” he says, if a tad hyperbolically. “I vividly remember that until the late 70s, many prominent roads in Shimla, including the town’s nerve centre — Mall Road — would be cleaned by water in tankers, but now supplying even drinking water to its residents has become a Herculean task for government agencies,” he says, sitting on the lush lawn of his century-old bungalow, surrounded by cedars, under an overcast sky. He remembers 2018, when Shimla didn’t have water for 10-12 days. On average the so-called Smart City needs 42 million litres of water per day in summer; only 30 million litres is available, as per government data.
A 2016 Hazard Vulnerability and Risk Assessment Report (HVRA) by the Shimla Municipal Corporation that foretold doom — fires, landslides, and earthquakes — says, “If an earthquake or any other disaster occurs at this hour, the consequences will be catastrophic.... Haphazard construction within the town (city) is yet another major problem that needs to be dealt with.” But the State hasn’t dealt with it in the years since.
Rapid, unregulated urbanisation has put the vital resources of colonial hill stations like Nainital, in Uttarakhand, under immense stress. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
The Himachal Pradesh government asserts that it is cognisant of the situation and since coming to power in 2022 has already started taking steps to problem-solve in ‘eco-friendly’ ways. “We are working to set up ropeways in Shimla, which will have a network of around 15 km in the first phase, which will connect 15 different stations,” says Naresh Chauhan, principal adviser to Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.
He adds that this will cost about ₹1,546.4 crore. In January this year though, cracks developed at the launchpad of the Auli ropeway, a part of Uttarakhand’s Joshimath crisis.
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Mr. Chauhan says that the government is working on bringing water from the Sutlej river to solve the water crisis, with funding of about ₹900 crore from the World Bank. Also under consideration is the development of satellite towns, the shifting of some offices as well as vegetable, grain, and apple markets out of the main city.
Shimla’s former Deputy Mayor Tikender Panwar agrees, saying mountain States and towns require an altogether different approach to infrastructure development and redevelopment. Mr. Panwar, who is an urban specialist, talks of on-ground realities. If he has to reach his parents’ home in Shimla’s suburb Tutu from the main town, it takes him about 35 minutes on his bicycle. “If I take my car, it takes me an hour and a half on average,” he says.
In peak summer and winter months, when there’s a rush to the hills to get away from the heat of the plains or experience snow, Nainital, in Kumaon, is another hotspot. | Photo Credit: File Photo
He calls the Centre’s attitude towards mountain States impetuous: “We have to climb the ladder of development and generate our own resources. It’s one of the principal reasons for near-blindfolded development.” This ‘climb’ has meant that the States have had to develop massive hydropower projects, violating environmental concerns. They’ve also had to generate revenue from “mass tourism for which road infrastructure was targeted without even letting the geological concerns drive this trajectory”. He says successive governments adopted a “copy-paste model of development from the plains” with the main aim being to attract investment.
While tourism has always been the reason for the development of many hill stations, there’s a difference between the tourists from a few generations ago, who came for longer durations. In Kasauli, another prominent tourist destination in Himachal,U.D. Sharma, who recently retired as assistant manager from Ros Common, a hotel of the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation, says, “These days, with more people owning vehicles, the number of ‘weekend tourists’ has increased.” This has spiralled vehicular traffic and visitors, who just need to jump in a car and head ‘down the road’.
Over 1 lakh vehicles are registered in Shimla, with close to 35,000 commuting daily and about 15,000 vehicles from outside entering the town daily. | Photo Credit: PTI
Neighbours on the hill
When Colonel Frederick Young ‘founded’ Mussoorie in the early 1820s, he probably didn’t imagine that this ‘leisure capital’ would become an overcrowded hill station that would leave the limestone rich mountains shattered. With the same problems as Shimla, Mussoorie — also known as the queen of the hills — was built to cater to between 10,000 and 15,000 people, with 7,133 people permanently living here in 1951. In the 2011 census, there were 30,118. There is also a floating population of 15,000 to 25,000 tourists.
The city, in the seismic zone, which had just 1,063 buildings, with houses, hotels, guest houses, and government offices in 1950, currently has around 5,000 structures under similar categories, with 280 hotels and 400 guest houses and homestays, as per Nagar Palika Parishad data. The staff is neither counted in the permanent population nor in its floating population.
In Shimla, the woods of cedar, pine, oak, and rhododendron recede into the background against the magnitude of the infrastructural problem. | Photo Credit: ANI
Hugh Gantzer, an acclaimed travel writer and member of the Supreme Court monitoring committee on environmental issues of Doon Valley and Mussoorie, who has been living in the Mussoorie hills since pre-Independence in a house which is 152 years old, remembers how there were just five big hotels 50 years ago, along with a couple of boarding houses and smaller hotels.
On his insistence, a study on the carrying capacity of Mussoorie was conducted by an expert committee from the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in 2001. It concluded that no further construction in Mussoorie was viable. However, the construction of buildings that obscure mountain views, along with ropeways, and tunnels continues, says Mr. Gantzer, who feels choked in peak tourism season due to vehicular pollution. “The honking and noise never stop,” he says, thinking back to the days of peace and tranquillity.
A ropeway across the Naini lake that used to be a star attraction but now smells of dead fish. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Warnings abound
In peak summer and winter months, when there’s a rush to the hills to get away from the heat of the plains or experience snow, Nainital, in Kumaon, is another hotspot.
Built by the British as the capital of the United Provinces, historians say they considered it for the summer capital, but a geophysical survey ruled out the construction of a railway line due to the fragility of the hills. “It’s ironic that even the British had a thought for our natural habitat, but we Indians are destroying the hills,” says Shekhar Pathak, a historian and social activist from Nainital, who had participated in the Chipko movement in the 70s.
Earlier this year, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) also issued directions to the Uttarakhand government to conduct a study of the carrying capacity of this hill station, built for 20,000 people, lest it witness a Joshimath-like crumbling.
The 2011 census put its population at over 41,000. The town gets a floating population of 50,000-55,000 a day in peak season. Even dull days see about 20,000 visitors.
Mussoorie — also known as the queen of the hills — was built to cater to between 10,000 and 15,000 people. | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy
In 1993, despite a Supreme Court order that no new construction should come up in Nainital, Praveen Sharma, a member of Nainital Hotels and Restaurants Association, says, “Now, there are 150 hotels and 40-50 homestays. There were barely 100 hotels in Nainital 20 years ago.” He adds that many use their houses as homestays that are not registered. Some of the new constructions have led to the destruction of the Naini lake, once a major tourist attraction, now a water body that stinks of dead fish. The NGT had taken cognisance of this earlier and issued a notice to the State government.
The High Court, which sits in a building from 1900 and is situated against the Naina peak, the State’s highest, has warned against the possibility of a Joshimath-like situation arising here. As government files move slowly between offices and reports submitted only to be brought up at the next catastrophe in an I-told-you-so manner, tourists continue to flock to hill towns.
Mussoorie, in the seismic zone, which had just 1,063 buildings, with houses, hotels, guest houses, and government offices in 1950, currently has around 5,000 structures. | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy
What they may not realise is that 14% of Nainital and 18% of Mussoorie fall in the category 5 damage class, which means of the 6,206 buildings, many will crumble completely if there is an earthquake. “In the event of an earthquake, direct economic losses to the surveyed buildings alone in the two towns are estimated to be U.S. $137.78 million,” says the study, done by the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority.
About 14% of Nainital falls in the category 5 damage class, which means buildings will crumble completely if there is an earthquake. | Photo Credit: PTI
Writer Ruskin Bond, whose stories about Mussoorie many early readers resonate with, says he isn’t surprised by the onslaught of people, traffic, and built-up environment, because the State is dependent on tourism. He recalls someone telling him recently, “‘We in India now need more hill stations.’”
Published - June 23, 2023 01:57 am IST
