India Environment Portal Knowledge for change

About us Contact us
downtoearth-subscribe

Browse by subjects

SHIMLA

  • 30/10/1999

SHIMLA "Out of order," Sanjiv Lakhanpal tells one of his regular customers, as hefiddles with some parts of the photocopier in his shop. The 34-year-old earns his livelihood from a public call office near the bus stand on national highway-22, known as Cart Road in Shimla, the capital of the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. Ask Lakhanpal what is wrong with the machine and he grunts, "Diesel fumes." The well-informed man explains that diesel exhaust has particles that ruin the sensors of the photocopier, and wonders what they can do to his lungs.

Welcome to Shimla, the 'queen of the hills' that lies sprawling along a crescent-shaped ridge, with its suburbs clinging to the slopes. The platitudes in the tourist brochures are not entirely misleading. The scene changes as you climb to The Mall, the picturesque shopping centre near the top of the ridge. The British colonial rulers, who had made Shimla their summer capital, had banned all vehicles from The Mall. The ban exists even today. And Cart Road - Shimla's main connection with the rest of the world - hosts all the traffic and vehicular pollution."The air pollution situation is quite bad. Wherever there are inclines on the road, vehicles come under extra stress and release more soot. At such places, you can see that the retaining walls [built along the roads on the hills] have blackened," says Narendra Sharma, regional transport officer, Shimla. "Roads are narrow and they cannot be widened. Also, there is no space to park vehicles. So vehicles are parked wherever there is space, adding to traffic congestion. It is very difficult to work out a systematic alternative transport system," he adds.

According to data from the regional transport office (rto), the total number of vehicles registered in Shimla district has nearly doubled from 5,843 on March 31, 1990, to 10,228 on March 31, 1999. In this, the number of vehicles that would fall in the diesel category shot up from 1,455 to 1,868, while the number of two-wheelers has risen from 2,563 to 4,345.

But this data does not tell the true story as Shimla is an important tourist destination. While the present population of the town is estimated around 120,000 (91,000 according to the 1991 census), the figure increases to 225,000 when the floating population is taken into account. Being an important tourist destination and the hub of the state's apple trade that is crucial to its economy, the number of vehicles plying in or passing through Shimla is much higher. "The number of vehicles coming to Shimla increases five-fold in the April-July tourist season and doubles in October," estimates Manoj Kumar, mayor of Shimla. "There is unusual smoke in the air during the peak of the tourist season," the mayor adds. "In 1998, between July 20 and October 31, which is the apple season in the state, approximately 40,000 trucks left the control room at Bhakilty in the Theog sub-division, 20 km from Shimla, where I was posted at the time," Sharma recalls.

Dangerous sound of silence
Although data shows that the air pollution situation in Shimla has improved in the past decade (see box: Signs of improvement), officials of the Himachal Pradesh Pollution Control Board are really tight-lipped and unwilling to discuss the vehicular air pollution problem. S S Chandel, principal scientific officer with the State Council for Science, Technology and Environment, says, "Areas near the Bus Stand are indeed highly polluted. I think people living there must be inhaling a lot of lead and other harmful substances. There was a suggestion that battery-operated vehicles should ply within the city and the bus stand should be shifted out of the city."
"Hospital admissions for bronchitis increase by about 30 per cent during winter," estimates Surendra Kashyap, professor and head of the department of chest diseases at Shimla's Indira Gandhi Medical College, the largest hospital in the state. "Oxygen levels are quite low at high altitudes and prevalence of bronchial problems is quite high. I think that the main problem in Shimla is indoor air pollution, especially due to the use of coal-based stoves in winter. We do get quite a few cases of bronchitis from the Cart Road area and patients do complain of smoke from vehicles. The government must come out with better, cleaner transport systems in view of public health problems," Kashyap says.

Obviously, Shimla needs an alternative transport system that addresses the peculiar problems of the hilly terrain. Some government officials point out that the Rail India Technical and Economic Services (rites), a New Delhi-based public sector consultancy, had been invited to work on this issue and had proposed an alternative transport plan for Shimla four years ago. But the political leadership has taken no decision on the proposals made at that time, the officials point out.

Shimla clearly needs an alternative transport plan that addresses its peculiar problems. Otherwise, the recent successes revealed in the data will all be undone in the course of time.

Related Content