Tourist rush, new hotels, constructions: Uttarakhand to assess ‘carrying capacity' of cities

Indian Express

7 hours ago

The Uttarakhand government has commissioned assessments of 'carrying capacity' of cities in the Himalayan state to check ecological imbalances, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said Tuesday.
'Carrying capacity' refers to the maximum number of individuals an ecosystem or specific area can sustainably support without degrading natural resources or causing significant environmental damage.
A senior Uttarakhand government official told The Indian Express that 'given the focus of the Chief Minister on both ecology and economy', the state government is intent on aligning its development policies with the ecology in the hill state that sees heavy influx of tourists, and where construction activities can be ecologically harmful if done in an unplanned manner.
'If the carrying capacity of an AC room is 50, but we pack 100 people in it, the AC won't work well. The same principle applies to all urban spaces — be it cities or roads. Therefore, we are getting the carrying capacity of key cities assessed. If some are clearly exceeding their carrying capacity, we will have to see alternative spaces for some activities,' the official said.
The hill state attracts streams of tourists both to its hill stations and Hindu shrines, with 37 lakh people visiting these shrines in the summer of 2025. The large numbers often pose a problem, as the ecology as well as the infrastructure cannot cater to them.
For Kanwar Yatra, scheduled to take place from July 11-23, around 3 crore devotees are estimated to visit Haridwar to collect holy water from the Ganga to offer at Shiva temples in their hometowns.
Add the weekend tourism to Nainital and Mussoorie, and the problem of overcrowding and traffic snarls, apart from new hotels springing up, has drawn attention to whether the infrastructure has got overburdened.
In November 2017, then Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had said that Uttarakhand had faced 39 earthquakes in two years due to ecological imbalances and added that prevention was better than cure.
In late 2022 and early 2023, houses in Joshimath in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district began to develop cracks. The scenic town faced the geological phenomenon of land subsidence, or sinking, which is caused, among other things, by excessive extraction of groundwater. Joshimath had seen a lot of construction activities over the decades and the widening of roads, which are believed to have led to the crisis.
Vikas Pathak is deputy associate editor with The Indian Express and writes on national politics. He has over 17 years of experience, and has worked earlier with The Hindustan Times and The Hindu, among other publications. He has covered the national BJP, some key central ministries and Parliament for years, and has covered the 2009 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls and many state assembly polls. He has interviewed many Union ministers and Chief Ministers.
Vikas has taught as a full-time faculty member at Asian College of Journalism, Chennai; Symbiosis International University, Pune; Jio Institute, Navi Mumbai; and as a guest professor at Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi.
Vikas has authored a book, Contesting Nationalisms: Hinduism, Secularism and Untouchability in Colonial Punjab (Primus, 2018), which has been widely reviewed by top academic journals and leading newspapers.
He did his PhD, M Phil and MA from JNU, New Delhi, was Student of the Year (2005-06) at ACJ and gold medalist from University Rajasthan College in Jaipur in graduation. He has been invited to top academic institutions like JNU, St Stephen's College, Delhi, and IIT Delhi as a guest speaker/panellist. ... Read More