Tourists told to leave Himalayan city crippled by water shortage
A SEVERE water shortage has affected thousands of Indian and foreign tourists to the Himalayan city of Shimla who have been told to stay away, cutting off the town’s main source of income.
A combination of antiquated infrastructure, low rainfall and burgeoning visitor numbers each summer means residents are queuing for hours to receive two or three buckets of water a day for drinking, washing, cooking and cleaning.
The local government has been forced to distribute water under police protection, deploying more than 70 officers to deal with the situation.
Sales of bottled water have jumped around 60 per cent, and demonstrations have been taking place across Shimla. Social media posts have begged tourists not to visit and put further pressure on water supplies.
The Himachal Pradesh high court on Wednesday directed the commissioner of the water board immediately to disconnect the water supply of hotels which had not paid their municipal dues, and all construction work was postponed.
Hotels have been forced to turn away guests and refund bookings. Some of them, without access to a reliable water supply, have had to close temporarily. Residents have been told to stop washing cars, while the annual international summer festival, due to be held next week, has also been cancelled.
Shimla, sometimes spelt Simla, lies at the foothill of the Himalayas, in the state of Himachal Pradesh, and offers respite from the claustrophobic heat of the rest of India during the summer months, with temperatures in Delhi currently hitting 43-45C. However, the hill station that was built in the early 19th century for around 20,000 people now has a population of nearly 200,000, with about half as many again descending on its trails and walkways annually as visitors.
Around 12 million tourists visit the state annually, according to the region’s tourist board, and some 400,000 of them are foreigners.
Travellers from the UK, the US and France make up the top three contributors to the state’s tourist revenue, followed by Australia.
Tourists to Shimla itself number around 90,000 – 100,000 every summer, according to recent figures.
Tikender Panwar, the former deputy mayor of Shimla, said wholesale change was needed, even if it meant cutting off tourism income, the region’s biggest earner.
“What is required is a leapfrog action,” he said. “The money is there but the execution of action to fetch water from a perennial source is slow. Due to little snow and rain, water is hardly retained in the short span. An overall resilient strategy is needed.”
Jai Ram Thakur, the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, said in 2016 that Shimla received 35 million litres of water a day, while last May, the water supply was 34 million litres a day.