<p>A couple of years ago, your columnist left Manali for a week in Ladakh. When he returned, he could barely recognise the place. Days of torrential rain had transformed the Beas into something more menacing. Roads had disappeared, bridges had broken and large stretches of the valley looked as though an environmental calamity had passed through. What struck him most was the speed of the transformation. He had been away for barely a week. </p><p>Your columnist thought of that journey again after the recent catastrophe in the Himalayas around Nepal, where floods and landslides swept away settlements, bridges and buildings and killed hundreds of people. The causes of individual disasters differ and it would be foolish to blame every flood on bad construction. But they offer an uncomfortable warning. The Himalayas are geologically fragile, crowded and exposed to extraordinary concentrations of rain. We have responded by putting ever more hotels, roads and vehicles into narrow valleys. At some point, the arithmetic is likely to become brutal. Your columnist's fear is that a serious tragedy in one of India's hill stations is now less a question of whether than when. </p><p>Anyone who visits Manali or Simla can see why. Your columnist mentions these two because he knows them well and frequents them often, not because they are uniquely guilty. Several other hill stations suffer from the same disease. What were once relatively small mountain towns have become badly planned cities perched precariously on hillsides. Hotels rise one above another. Buildings cling to slopes where construction should never have been allowed. Roads built for a fraction of today's traffic spend the tourist season choking on cars. Water, sewage, rubbish disposal and parking have struggled to keep pace. The irony is difficult to miss. People drive hundreds of kilometres to escape congested cities and arrive at another congested city, except this one has steep slopes, unstable geology and considerably fewer escape routes. </p><p>None of this has happened without warning. The National Green Tribunal has repeatedly raised concerns about Simla’s construction, carrying capacity and the regularisation of unauthorised buildings. In Manali too, expert studies have warned about excessive commercial construction. We do not suffer from a shortage of reports, but from a lack of willingness to act upon them. The most dangerous practice is perhaps the repeated willingness to tolerate a violation today and regularise it tomorrow. Once builders believe that an illegal structure can eventually be legitimised, a building rule ceases to be a rule. It becomes an opening position in a negotiation. In the plains, that can produce ugly cities. In the mountains, it will kill people. There are things that can still be done. Hill towns need enforceable carrying capacity limits covering buildings, hotel rooms, tourists, vehicles, water and waste. Yet one has to ask a painful question. Have we already gone too far? </p><p>The danger is that we will continue muddling along because catastrophe has not yet struck on the required scale. Another hotel will be permitted, another slope cut, another road widened and another illegal building quietly accepted. Each decision will appear manageable on its own. Collectively they are building risk into the mountains. Then, one monsoon, the rain may not stop. A slope may give way and the only road out may disappear. If that happens in the middle of the tourist season, the consequences could be appalling. And when television pictures show collapsed buildings, stranded families and vehicles buried beneath mud, we will doubtless call it an unprecedented natural disaster. </p><p>It will be neither unprecedented nor entirely natural. We have been given far too many warnings for that. </p>
<p>A couple of years ago, your columnist left Manali for a week in Ladakh. When he returned, he could barely recognise the place. Days of torrential rain had transformed the Beas into something more menacing. Roads had disappeared, bridges had broken and large stretches of the valley looked as though an environmental calamity had passed through. What struck him most was the speed of the transformation. He had been away for barely a week. </p><p>Your columnist thought of that journey again after the recent catastrophe in the Himalayas around Nepal, where floods and landslides swept away settlements, bridges and buildings and killed hundreds of people. The causes of individual disasters differ and it would be foolish to blame every flood on bad construction. But they offer an uncomfortable warning. The Himalayas are geologically fragile, crowded and exposed to extraordinary concentrations of rain. We have responded by putting ever more hotels, roads and vehicles into narrow valleys. At some point, the arithmetic is likely to become brutal. Your columnist's fear is that a serious tragedy in one of India's hill stations is now less a question of whether than when. </p><p>Anyone who visits Manali or Simla can see why. Your columnist mentions these two because he knows them well and frequents them often, not because they are uniquely guilty. Several other hill stations suffer from the same disease. What were once relatively small mountain towns have become badly planned cities perched precariously on hillsides. Hotels rise one above another. Buildings cling to slopes where construction should never have been allowed. Roads built for a fraction of today's traffic spend the tourist season choking on cars. Water, sewage, rubbish disposal and parking have struggled to keep pace. The irony is difficult to miss. People drive hundreds of kilometres to escape congested cities and arrive at another congested city, except this one has steep slopes, unstable geology and considerably fewer escape routes. </p><p>None of this has happened without warning. The National Green Tribunal has repeatedly raised concerns about Simla’s construction, carrying capacity and the regularisation of unauthorised buildings. In Manali too, expert studies have warned about excessive commercial construction. We do not suffer from a shortage of reports, but from a lack of willingness to act upon them. The most dangerous practice is perhaps the repeated willingness to tolerate a violation today and regularise it tomorrow. Once builders believe that an illegal structure can eventually be legitimised, a building rule ceases to be a rule. It becomes an opening position in a negotiation. In the plains, that can produce ugly cities. In the mountains, it will kill people. There are things that can still be done. Hill towns need enforceable carrying capacity limits covering buildings, hotel rooms, tourists, vehicles, water and waste. Yet one has to ask a painful question. Have we already gone too far? </p><p>The danger is that we will continue muddling along because catastrophe has not yet struck on the required scale. Another hotel will be permitted, another slope cut, another road widened and another illegal building quietly accepted. Each decision will appear manageable on its own. Collectively they are building risk into the mountains. Then, one monsoon, the rain may not stop. A slope may give way and the only road out may disappear. If that happens in the middle of the tourist season, the consequences could be appalling. And when television pictures show collapsed buildings, stranded families and vehicles buried beneath mud, we will doubtless call it an unprecedented natural disaster. </p><p>It will be neither unprecedented nor entirely natural. We have been given far too many warnings for that. </p>
