Shimla, August 4
The creation of a separate bus stand at Dhalli for all buses bound for Upper Shimla and the completion of the ISBT at Tuti Kandi could rid the “Queen of Hills” of the painful traffic snarls, which have made the life of locals as well as tourists miserable.

The Municipal Corporation (MC), along with the Town and Country Planning (TCP), Forest, Tourism, Police and the Transport Department, is engaged in the preparation of a City Mobility Plan (CMB) which will focus on decongesting certain areas, creating more parking slots and reducing the total number of vehicles which enter Shimla to the minimum.

Being a popular tourist destination, the problem of traffic congestion is heightened far more during the summers when thousands of vehicles enter the town.

Narrow roads and insufficient parking slot create a chaotic situation as vehicles have to be parked along the roads.

There is a proposal to create a separate bus stand at Dhalli from where 400 buses bound to various parts of Shimla and Kinnaur districts would emanate. At present, all these buses start and terminate at the Lakkar Bazaar bus stand, adding to traffic congestion on the Cart Road. The Himachal Roadways Transportation Corporation (HRTC) already has a sizeable chunk of land that can be developed further to create a full-fledged bus stand.

Another proposal being considered is the diversion of all traffic bound for Upper Shimla from Shoghi itself on the bypass. There is also a proposal to have a Transport Nagar at Shoghi so that there is an ample space for the parking of buses and trucks.

Once the main ISBT is completed at Tuti Kandi, about 450 buses bound for various parts of the state and outside will start from there.

“Our biggest concern is to provide vertical connectivity from here to the main town which we intend doing by the way of lifts and elevators at the different points,” said a senior official. There is a proposal to have an elevator connecting Darni Ka Bagicha to Sabzi Mandi.

The Tourism Department will be involved in the creation of tunnels which will help reduce the traffic on the Cart Road. The Police Department on its part will explore the possibility of creating parking slots in the sub-urban areas like Shoghi, Ghannati, Vikasnagar, Kufri, Charrabra, Ashwani Khud, Tara Devi, Bharari and Kuftadhar.

The Police Department has been asked to prepare traffic plans to decongest Bharari, Kasumpti and Boileauganj while the possibility of having a flyover at Kahalini Chowk is also under the consideration of the authorities.

The police has also stressed the need for the widening of the road from Capital Hotel, filling station at Kaithu up to the tunnel near Auckland tunnel.

This route has traffic jams perpetually all through the day making commuting difficult.

Shimla, August 4
People in the hill state won’t have to make repeated visits to various offices in connection with routine matters like obtaining a driving licence or renewal of an arms licence,thanks to the new initiative of the government to take the information technology-enabled services a step further to provide information regarding the status of application through SMS (short message service).

The people living in the remote areas will benefit the most as they will save time and money by avoiding repeated visits to various offices to know the fate of their applications for obtaining various documents. The state-of-the-art telecom network and the high cellphone density is indeed proving to be a boon for the people with the government deciding to merge the web-enabled services with cellphone-based SMS communication for the delivery of various public services.

They will have to visit the office concerned only once to submit the application in which the cellphone number will have to be mentioned. Thereafter, the applicant will be kept informed about its status through SMS. For instance, the date by which a document will be ready for delivery will be conveyed to the applicant through automatically generated SMS. The biggest advantage is that with almost 18 lakh cellphone subscribers in a state having around 12.5 lakh households, almost every family has the facility. While computer penetration is limited to the urban areas and Internet services are not being availed by many people, cellphones have been ringing even in the remotest areas of villages.

The government has assigned the task of setting up cellphone SMS gateway to the Parwanoo-based company, Cellebrum Technologies, which will also develop software to integrate it with various applications and the state data centre to deliver a basket of services. To begin with, all services being made available through the Sugam Centres will be integrated for cellphone communication.

In the next phase, the SMS communication services will be extended to a range of services and even such information as the date of hearing of a case in the revenue courts, will be conveyed through SMS, says secretary, information and technology, BK Aggrawal.

Prompt redressal of grievances has been a priority of the government and the plan was to extend the facility of lodging complaints with various authorities through cellphone-based SMS services.

The people will not have to visit various offices to file complaints and they will also get a response informing the status or action taken in the matter through SMS.

With the statewide area network (HIMSWAN) to provide computer connectivity right down to the block level nearing completion, 3,366 community service centres (CSCs) being set up in villages will enable various departments to provide various services at the doorstep of the people and help bridge the urban-rural digital divide.

The CSCs are being set up through public-private partnership and as many as 400 of them have been validated. Another 800 centres have been set up and are awaiting validation.

When I read the history of the British who had come to India with the East India Company and later formed the government here, I find that they had assumed that the women existed to marry and bear children. A few of them had more children throwing light and brightness in their homes than the number of electric bulbs within. Henry Irwin, the great architect, who gave The Gaiety and the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies to Shimla, begot 13 children in 16 years. My anxiety halted with quote from Margaret Macmillan’s “Women of the Raj”: “Children were a sign that the British were established in India, that the community was “sound”. And the presence of white children showed that the British men had firmly abjured the bad old practice of keeping Indian mistresses”. Another reason for bearing children frequently was that the British mothers found it difficult to raise their children in the heat of the plains because prior to the modern medicine, they faced an unending struggle to keep their children alive. They, naturally, preferred to have children in home weather and Shimla provided that where there were hospitals and doctors to attend to emergencies though the doctors then were known as “drunken sawbones” and nurses were callous. When Monica Lang begged for something to deaden the pain at the time of delivery, she was told by a nurse: “You got yourself into this and you have to get out of it yourself”.

The British mothers in Shimla, who could not breastfeed their children, used to hire hill women as wet nurses and a few treated them badly though there were instances where a wet nurse starved her own child to keep the “gora baba” alive. Steel and Gardner had then written a book “The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook” warning that the wet nurse “should not be treated as if she were merely an animated bottle”. Each European mother had the choice of selecting between an ayah (mostly a pahari woman) and a nanny (mostly a European lady) and those with money used to go in for a nanny, but she knew that the love and affection that an ayah would pour on her child be exemplary. They were, however, scared that a pahari ayah would wipe their children’s eyes with the edges of their dupatta thus giving them ophthalmia or give opium to keep them quiet.

When the children grew up, the mothers used to organise elaborate children’s parties. “Lady Dufferin gave one in Shimla in the 1880s where the entertainment included two elephants for the guests to ride on”. Despite all this, an eminent physician had warned in 1872 that the children born in India “will grow up slight, weedy, and delicate, over-precocious it may be, and with general feebleness”. The children of Anglo-Indian soldiers in the barracks of Totu, Kasauli and other places were called “barrack rats”. I wonder if the bouncy babies born and brought up in Shimla town were termed as white mice!

The artistic skills of children were on display at the Gaiety Theatre at the painting exhibition organised by the State Language, Art and Culture Department.

In all, 40 works of 10 child artists from the Sarvodaya Bal Ashram were exhibited. Besides their fine art skills, the works also reflected the level of their awareness about contemporary issues and their concern about them. Some of the paintings were as good as those of any professional artist.

Social Welfare and Empowerment Minister Sarveen Chaudhary inaugurated the exhibition.

Dharamsala, August 4
The lack of proper parking places is the bane of Dharamsala and its surrounding tourist hot spots. For the past two months the area has been witnessing a huge rush of tourists, which has lead to frequent traffic jams mainly because of the lack of proper parking places.

People are forced to park their vehicles on the roads, bringing them in confrontation with traffic cops, who have no answer to a common query that where should people park their vehicles when there is no parking space available.

In Dharmasala town, there are two major markets, Kachehri market, near local secretariat, and Kotwali market. In both these markets, there is no public parking place. People have to park their vehicles along the roads leading to traffic congestion and sometimes accidents. In the Kotwali market, the local municipal council is trying to bring up a public parking place, but the work is very slow and tardy.

At Mcleodganj, the main tourist hub of the area, the only public parking place at the entrance is embroiled in controversy due to encroachments upon the forestland and illegal construction. Chief Minister PK Dhumal had laid the foundation stone of a parking place near Dalai Lama temple, but the work has not been started as yet. The result is that most of the commercial vehicles bringing tourists here are parked on along the roadsides, despite “no parking” signboards that indicate that violation would attract a fine of Rs 500.

At Bhagsunag, another famous tourist place of the area, there is just one parking place that becomes inadequate during the tourist season. In Bhagsunag and Mcleodganj, illegal constructions are the main reason for traffic congestion. As per the rules laid down by the district and town planning authorities, any commercial building coming in the area should have a specified parking place at the ground level. However, the people constructing hotels and shopping complexes are not leaving any parking space.

The district and town planning and the municipal council authorities have failed to take action against illegal constructions or even force people to earmark sufficient parking place in their buildings. Many new shopping malls are coming up in the Dharamsala area for which the parking place should be made mandatory in the basement, else the traffic situation in the town is going to worsen.

Palampur, August 4
All is not well with the state health department. Health services in Kangra district are in a bad shape. Functioning of the Rogi Kalyan Samitis, constituted by the state government in various hospitals in the district, has come under severe criticism as crores of rupees collected by these samitis from poor patients are not properly utilised or spent on them.

It may be recalled that the government had set up these smitis in the district, subdivisional and block-level hospitals with an aim to generate funds to meet the day-to-day financial requirements of these health institutions. These samitis collect funds from the patients who undergo medical tests like X-ray, ultra sound scanning, surgery and other medical examinations in the hospitals. The patients had to pay between Rs 10 to Rs 300 to 500 to these samitis on every test and these funds were suppose to be incurred on the welfare of poor patients and for the betterment of the hospitals. The SDM of the subdivisions concerned were made the supervisory officials for these samitis.

It is most surprising that no proper rules and regulations were made by the government to keep check on the functioning of these bodies. Even no provisions were made how funds collected would be utilised by the officials resulting that most of SMOs, BMOs and CMOs in the district, who collected these funds, failed to maintain proper accounts. In many hospitals no body knew how much amounts were received from the poor patients and where it was spent.

Information gathered by The Tribune also revealed that the funds collected by these samitis had gone in crores in the past few years. It is a matter of serious concern that utilisation of these funds were not subject to any audit by the Accountant General of the state or internal audit by the health department.

However, the true picture is entirely different as many SMOs purchased luxurious items, furniture, refrigerators, sign boards and air conditioners from these funds, which is a gross violation of directions of the state government or blatant misuse of funds collected from the poor patients. Besides, huge amount were shown paid to architects, engineers and contractors.

Under the government rules, items exceeding Rs 2,500 could not be purchases without calling open tenders, but these rules were not followed by the samitis and contractors and sub contractors were paid lakh of rupees.

It is also learnt that in one of the hospitals in the district over Rs 60 lakh were collected by the samitis in the past three years from the patients and these were shown spent on the welfare of the patients, construction of sheds, purchase of water coolers and other infrastructure. But today the situation is entirely different and no such item is seen in these hospitals.

A senior officer of the health department when contacted by The Tribune said all efforts were being made for the functioning of Rogi Kalyan Samitis more transparent. Necessary staff was also being provided to these samitis so that irregularities could be checked. He said the government had now brought these smaitis in the purview of the audit by the CAG.

Nurpur, August 4
Indiscriminate and clandestine use of veterinary oxytocin injections by farmers and bootleggers in lower Kangra district comprising Nurpur and Jawali subdivisions has been proving to be a health hazard. The injection, which costs only 50 paise, is being sold by some retailers for Rs 5. In veterinary treatment, this injection is administered to pregnant milch cattle for easy delivery.

Having multifarious qualities, the injection is being used by bootleggers and farmers for more gains. In fact, they are playing with the health of the people in the region. Inquiries revealed that the users are ignorant of the bad effects of oxytocin. The bootleggers use these injections for brewing illicit liquor which almost double liquor’s intoxication. Vegetable growers have also adopted this method of getting more yields. Anil Kumar, chief medical officer, Kangra, said oxytocin was highly dangerous to human consumption and its users should be educated for not playing with the lives of the people.