India’s legendary hill towns are sinking

WHEN THE temperature rises, Indians head upwards. In the scorching month of May, many venture to famous hill towns—none better known than Shimla, a resort in the foothills of the Himalayas which British colonial rulers used as their summer capital. Urbanites chase fairy-tale scenes of pine forest, snow-capped peaks and mischievous macaque monkeys.

That is only part of what they find. On a recent visit to Shimla, your correspondent sat in a high-altitude traffic jam all the way into the centre. These days the city’s Tudor-style town hall looks onto a branch of Domino’s Pizza. Punters watch the sun set over the mountains from the terraces of bars that blare songs by Lady Gaga.

Under the British, Shimla housed around 25,000 people. Now it welcomes roughly 2.7m visitors each year. Much of its expansion was unplanned. The skyline is a maze of modest homestays—their sun-faded signs promising views that are often blocked by the building next door. Houses cling to 75-degree slopes, flouting both gravity and bylaws.

Shimla’s carrying capacity—the population that its drains, roads and waste management can sustain—has been exceeded many times over. Lanes designed for horse-drawn carriages host up to 26,000 cars a day. Entire neighbourhoods have started sinking. Locals watch for newly uncovered tree roots and cracked walls—signs that the earth might give way.

Such problems are shared by many of India’s other hill towns. Their troubles attest to overdevelopment that has occurred all across the Himalayan states, say worried observers. In recent years, places including Himachal Pradesh (of which Shimla is the capital), Uttarakhand and Sikkim have benefited from big centrally funded projects, such as hydropower stations and new roads. At the same time environmental matters “have not just gone downhill, it’s been an avalanche in all the Himalayan states,” says Avay Shukla, a former official in Himachal Pradesh.

Weather across the Indian Himalayan region is growing less predictable. Springtime seems to be shortening; dry winters become scorching summers. Environmental damage is increasing the harm that extreme weather events may cause. In the past decade, disasters such as landslides, flash floods and forest fires have killed 10,543 people in Himachal Pradesh alone. In August India’s Supreme Court said that if developers keep cutting into mountains, the state could “vanish into thin air”.

In Shimla, experts in conservation and disaster preparedness want fewer tourists to come. They want authorities to impose a tourist tax and withhold new hotel licences. They want steps to curb a building spree, including fresh efforts to enforce existing rules about construction.

Yet that would be at odds with the state government’s goal of tripling the number of tourists who visit Himachal Pradesh each year. Workers are expanding the main roads into Shimla. The Shimla Development Plan 2041—the town’s first master plan in four decades—overrides earlier construction bans. Tikender Singh Panwar, a former deputy mayor, is worried. He calls it “a disaster in the offing”. ■