When you do too much tourism

The funereal silence in shrinking rural hamlets contrasts eerily with the cacophony and concrete swell in the towns of the tiny hill State of Himachal Pradesh, now staring at an abyss of unplanned and unsustainable growth.

The spectre of tourists leaving in hordes from the capital, Shimla, through a month-long water crisis this summer is only a sideshow to the larger catastrophe, namely an ecologically disastrous development model that threatens to undo the State’s spectacular achievements in health, education, peace and prosperity.

The eco-fragile slopes of the higher mountains housing the major tourist hubs of Shimla, Manali, Dalhousie and Dharamshala are saturated with haphazard vertical construction of hotels, guest houses, restaurants and residential complexes while the lower Shivaliks are reeling under totally ill-planned industrial development in towns that resemble urban slums, such as Baddi in Solan and Kala Amb in Sirmaur district, respectively.

The statistics tell a sad story in these hills. As the tourist towns burst at the seams, the stunningly beautiful clusters not just in the relatively backward regions of Chamba, Lahaul Spiti and Kinnaur but also in the rural parts of Shimla show an actual decline in population, indicating significant migration to the already teeming cities.

Lahaul Spiti district comprises just 0.46 per cent of the hill State’s population with its 31,528 inhabitants. The high reaches of Kinnaur house barely 1.26 per cent of the State’s population while Shimla, originally designed to accommodate just 25,000 people, is straining with its 2,32,900 inhabitants, besides an alarming influx of some 70,000 commuters and tourists per day during the peak season ( see box ).

This is not what the founders of this picturesque State had in mind when Himachal Pradesh was carved out of Punjab in 1971.

Orchards out, buildings in

According to Yashpal Singh Parmar, horticulturalist and nephew of Himachal Pradesh’s iconic first chief minister and founder Yashwant Singh Parmar, the political class is mainly focused on real estate development in Shimla and Manali with no inkling of the vision that can transform the State, with its immense potential.

“I have walked on foot with Yashwant Singh Parmar to the furthest village in our district. We would stay with people, eat in their kitchens and he would even remember which brand of bidi the village head smoked. It was in his time that the vision of developing Himachal Pradesh as a hub of horticulture with a chain of marketing and processing units for peaches, plums, apples and apricots was developed. Agriculture and horticulture universities were created. We could rival Switzerland in our tourism development by creating rural infrastructure. But all that policy-makers are concerned about now is how to make money out of builders in Shimla,” says Parmar.

From the Himachal Pradesh founder’s village Bagthan in Sirmaur district, the main road that traverses through Rajgarh, Haripur Dhar, Sangrah on to Renuka Ji, is perennially damaged. The road does not exist in the 13-km stretch from Naura Dhar to Haripur Dhar.

“This has been the case for the last 20 years. We have the Dhaula Dhar ranges here; they could invite trekkers and tourists. These are pristine, beautiful areas. But why would anyone want to stay back in an area without roads and basic facilities? The young people have moved to big cities,” says Parmar. That is the story of rural Himachal Pradesh. “That should explain why the potential of Kinnaur, Lahaul Spiti and even parts of Sirmaur has not been harvested. They have been emptied out of people while Manali and Shimla are bursting at the seams,” adds Parmar.

Parmar has a point about the builder-politician nexus, given the buzz in Shimla these days about the local government’s plans to challenge a much-hailed order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that imposed severe restrictions on construction around the State capital. The draft of a petition to be filed in the High Court is reportedly ready against the NGT order on November 16, 2017 ( Yogindra Mohan Sengupta and others vs Union of India and others ), that squarely blamed the local government for “unplanned and indiscriminate development” which has exposed Shimla and surrounding areas to “natural and man-made disasters”.

The NGT order prohibited new construction — residential, institutional or commercial — in any part of the core and green/forest area in Shimla. And even beyond these areas, no construction beyond two storeys-plus attic floor has been permitted. The NGT also restrained the State government from permitting any felling of trees without prior submission of application for sanctioning of plans for construction. Any violation of this order invites payment of environmental compensation of not less than ₹5 lakh.

Shaky storeys

“The hills need not be converted into concrete mountains and thereby cause adverse impact on environment ecology and stability of structures,” notes the NGT in its landmark order. This has led to hectic lobbying and pressure on the State government to regularise various multi-storey structures that literally dot the highway from Chandigarh to Shimla and beyond.

The NGT, approached intermittently by a clutch of individuals and activists, seems to be the only authority willing to step into this chaos created by unhindered construction activity around tourist hubs. Tension, and clashes, are mounting, with a local government official having been gunned down by the owner of a guest house in the tiny tourist spot of Kasauli in Solan district earlier this year.

The NGT had earlier ordered the demolition and closure of several establishments extended illegally. The hotel owners moved the Supreme Court against an NGT judgment (not the November 2017 ruling) but on April 17 this year, a bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta observed that illegal construction had put the city in danger and ordered their closure.

On May 3, Assistant Town Planner Shail Bala Sharma was shot dead and a workman injured when Vijay Thakur, the owner of Narayani Guest House, among a total of 13 hotels and guest houses that were ordered to be demolished by the Supreme Court, opened fire at the government officials supervising the demolition drive. Thakur was earlier heard by neighbours to say that he would “kill myself” if anyone damaged his property. The desperation is mounting and so is the pressure to dilute the NGT order that compromises almost every second building owner in the heart of the State capital.

The ruling BJP, however, is not exactly stone-deaf to the growing tide of landslides, flash floods and earthquakes that the NGT lists in its order as danger signals to halt the ongoing direction and pace of unplanned growth in the Himachal region. “We live in a special State and are sensitive to the fragility of our ecosystems. There is a direction that development and growth have taken in Himachal Pradesh which needs to be re-considered and checked. I have no doubt in my mind that illegal and haphazard construction activity and the direction of urban development in our State needs to be streamlined. In this, a certain political vision is required. We have reached a situation that would require both the BJP and the Congress to forget our political differences and chart a development plan that is not disturbed, regardless of who is in power,” says Anurag Thakur, BJP MP from Hamirpur, and son of former Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, PK Dhumal.

But the tipping point may have already been reached. It can be difficult to arrest a downward slide in the mountains.

With inputs from Tina Edwin

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