It is rare to see hardcore research on environment resulting in a creative endeavour. This collaboration is evident at the photography exhibition “Pani-Pahar: Water of the Himalayas” at Jorbagh Metro station. Part of Habitat Photosphere, India Habitat Centre’s photo-fest on sustainable development, it showcases several striking pictures clicked by well-known British photo-journalist Toby Smith, an Associate Scholar of the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute. These are based on an academic study conducted in India (Palampur, Rajgarh, Nainital and Mussoorie) and Nepal (Bidur and Dhilukhel) on land-use and development in the lower Himalayas by Professor Bhaskar Vira and Dr. Eszter Kovacs of the Department of Geography at Cambridge University. The study brings to fore how environmental and social changes are impacting the ways in which small towns throughout the region source and distribute water. Smith hopes that the gravity of water scarcity and its impact will reach out to a wider audience through the pictures and provoke a reaction.
Excerpts:
On how the exhibition was conceptualised
We have been working in the lower and middle Himalayas for a number of years, exploring issues of water scarcity and environmental and social change. We felt that it was important for these issues to be communicated more widely, and to contribute to public debate. One medium that allows us to reach a wider audience is through the visual image, especially when we have been working in a landscape that is both awe-inspiring and fragile at the same time. The pictures tell their own story, but also leave so much room for interpretation and hopes that it generates a narrative that provokes a reaction, and makes people think about these issues.
On the broad objectives of the show
Our broad objectives were to depict water through the landscape, from source to tap, and the really different communities that come into contact with it, take from it and modify it, in order to bring attention to long-term questions around the sustainability of water sources and their use in the Himalayas.
Often, urbanisation is thought of and approached as a process that takes place in large cities, but we wanted to capture what urbanisation looked like in the hills, with what effects on water sources and the people living alongside them. While water demand may be highest and most visible in down-stream settlements, water use and practices are also rapidly changing up-stream, with manifold consequences for the downstream. We wanted to try to showcase this environmental and community connectivity through our exhibition.
On the themes of the exhibition, namely water sources, urbanisation, seasonality and infrastructure
The four themes reflect the findings and focus points that emerged from our three-year research project around small town-urbanisation and water management in the lower Himalayas. One of our main perspectives throughout this was how water flows through, overlaps and intersects with everything else in the landscape – including how it sculpts the landscape. So in many ways our themes try to capture how water makes forms of human life possible, particularly urbanisation (Mussoorie nightscape); how sources are increasingly interlinked with people and management approaches because of urbanisation; how water is ‘controlled and captured’ through infrastructure (shots of Tehri dam); and then how water’s abundance and role varies through stark seasonal differences in the hills.
On the environmental and social impact on these small towns
Most of the towns in our research rely on water sources that are under increasing pressure, partly from the rise in populations in the towns themselves, but also in the surrounding areas. These sources have been taken for granted, and are often based on existing natural systems that are themselves undergoing change, both because of environmental pressures and human activities. So, for example, our choices to build in areas that are critical water zones in a town like Nainital has a serious impact on the water bearing capacity of the lake. The rise in tourist numbers in a town like Mussoorie means that a system designed to support a much smaller population is now under tremendous strain during the peak tourist season.
Local sources, like Kempty Falls, are being ignored in the attempt to provide much more expensive solutions, such as pumping water up the mountain from the Yamuna. In Rajgarh in Himachal, the water comes from an existing wildlife sanctuary (Churdhar), but the management plan of the sanctuary does not recognise this important service to residents of the town.
The Mall at Shimla as seen in a photograph clicked in 1915
On the stories that emerge from the pictures
Take for example the picture of the Kempty Falls which are 13 km from Mussoorie into the hilly interior of Uttarakhand. In the last five years the picturesque falls have seen an explosion in tourism, development and unregulated construction — fuelled by sustained promotion of the destination by Uttarakhand State Tourism Department to domestic tourists on bus tours. As an immediate concern, the surrounding villages are growing at an unsustainable rate with inward migration of families keen to capitalise on the Falls’ popularity. In the peak summer months four hour traffic jams clog the narrow road from Kempty to Mussoorie.
A simple, poetic and tragic case-study is the almost total loss of dhobi ghat communities across India (the Mussoorie picture). Ironically, the ancient hand dhobi system uses less water, electricity and detergent than any modern machine whilst having a lower grey-water production. It also directly employs families in a traditional but vital service economy.
On how pictures connect with research
All our pictures were taken from our research sites, from Dhulikhel and Bidur in Nepal, to Nainital, Rajgarh, and Mussoorie. In this sense, the research topic and findings are strongly represented and interlinked with the core objectives of the “Pani-Pahar...” photo exhibition. At each site, we tried to understand the up-and down-stream dynamics of water flows and access, the ways in which towns had planned (or not) their water distribution networks, how well these worked and how people accessed water informally alongside these systems. This is really well depicted by the series of photographs from Dhulikhel in Nepal, for example, where we traced the route of the pipeline through new surrounding land uses such as stone quarrying, village communities that made use of dam infrastructure for leisure, bathing and washing, all the way through to the pipework variably servicing the central areas of the town.
Toby Smith
On juxtaposing past and present as in “Changing Times” and “Shimla Before and After”
Change is an inherent part of these towns, and we were very fortunate in finding the most wonderful archival footage in the collections at Cambridge University. These original photographs were taken in the 19th Century by Samuel Bourne, and the opportunity to re-shoot the same locations over a hundred years later was too good to miss! The before-after pictures tell a story of change, and we hope this has been captured in the way that we have presented these images to the viewer.
