THE queen of hills is dead! Long live the queen of hills!! That sums up the current status of one of India's premier hill stations. It's not just Ooty (Udhagamandalam or Ootacamund) but the Nilgiris as a whole that is in a shambles today. Tea and tourism, the backbone of the district's economy, have been in doldrums for the past few years. The environmental woes of the district have hardly abated. Worse still, it has been ushered into an era of regular landslides. Yet the Nilgiris has the resilience to regain both its regal splendour and thriving economy if only the present crisis can be converted into an opportunity to realise its enormous potentials.
Tea crop was introduced in the Nilgiris by the British towards the latter half of the 19th Century and gained popular acceptance by the middle of the last century. Alongside the large estates, a class of native farmers took up tea planting. The small growers, as they came to be called, received a fillip in the 1960s when the State government set up an industrial tea cooperative to process the teas grown by them.
A development in the 1980s which changed the face of the Nilgiris as never before was the surge in tea prices and the consequent expansion of land under tea following the opening up of the export market to the erstwhile USSR under the bilateral rupee trade agreement.
The tea boom peaked in 1990 and began slowing down (exports surged for a couple of years around 1997 due to international crop shortage) after the erstwhile USSR split up and suffered a crushing blow when the Russian currency was devalued in 1998. The boom finally went bust in 2000 leading to a steep fall in the price of green leaves. The opening of tea imports following India's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) further added to the crisis, which has deepened in the last two years.
Growers, particularly the small holders, are in a dilemma whether to continue with tea or revert to vegetables or other crops. The prospects of another major agricultural shift in the district may not be immediately evident in the absence of any viable alternatives. However any such move is bound to have serious ecological consequences in the form of tremendous soil loss and geological instability. Therefore, making tea cultivation sustainable is not only a question of livelihood for the 60,000 small farmers, but is also vital for the environmental viability of the Nilgiri hills.
The tea industry in the Nilgiris is bound to face some consolidation in the wake of emerging competition. By the same token, it is for the industry to take advantage of the free trade in tea to increase exports and domestic sales through improvements in productivity, quality, value addition and marketing. The current crisis has hardly touched the retail price of tea which, in fact, has gone up for branded items. The Nilgiris has the agro-climatic conditions to grow the finest teas in the country.
The present crisis is basically a marketing crisis. Indcoserve, the umbrella organisation which has under its fold 16 industrial tea cooperatives accounting for 16 per cent of the total production, can play the role of a market leader. A beginning has already been made by the launching of brands like "Ooty tea" and "Ooty Gold". The next obvious step should be to have its own network of retail cum marketing outlets by setting up a chain of "Nilgiri Tea Rooms" (on the model of tea rooms in the United Kingdom and Europe) in the major cities and towns, in the South to start with, to promote Nilgiri teas.
A similar dilemma, though not on the same scale as tea, is the one over the eucalyptus plantations. Originally, the species was introduced from Australia by the British around the 1850s to save the native forests from being used as fuelwood. Ironically, a century later, around the 1950s, native forests were destroyed to plant eucalyptus for supplying raw material to a lone factory in the nearby plains producing synthetic rayon. Even grazing lands, village commons and catchment areas were not spared. Eucalyptus planting became a controversial issue during the 1980s when experiments proved that eucalyptus absorbed immense quantities of subsoil moisture which was suspected to be a contributory factor to the water scarcity in the hills. In response to a sustained campaign against the indiscriminate use of the species, the government finally agreed to stop planting eucalyptus under its forestry programmes. Meanwhile, the only industrial unit which was using the tree as a raw material turned sick, thereby drastically reducing the demand for the tree.
The sudden collapse in demand for the tree and environmental stigma attached to it seem to have swung the sentiment to the other extreme, calling into question the very need for the tree in the Nilgiris. But a total felling cannot be justified as there are still several good uses the tree and its products can be put to. Besides, a substantial section of the people is dependent on the oil extracted from the tree. Both timber and oil from the tree have widespread utility and commercial viability. Eucalyptus can be selectively grown for fuel, timber and medicinal purposes.
As a tourist destination, writers have favourably compared the Nilgiris with famous tropical resorts including Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka, Baguio in the Philippines, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, the Blue Mountain Resorts of New South Wales, Australia, and the Lake Resorts of Guatemala, South America. Various factors over the past three decades have made the Nilgiris one of the most patronised tourist centres in the country. However, without the benefit of a proper plan there has been a haphazard growth of tourism which has helped neither the district's economy nor its environment.
There is vast potential for promoting tourism, especially of the special kind.
Bold thinking and large investments to the tap the natural advantages can make the Nilgiris an international tourist destination. As a first step, Ooty town, which bears the brunt of the tourist traffic, needs to be reconstructed. Though Ooty is one of the premier hill stations in the country, neither the district administration nor the municipality is endowed with any special powers or resources to maintain and run the place as a tourist town. The result is that the available civic amenities are woefully inadequate to serve the needs of the swelling tourist crowd.
Over 500 hotels and lodging houses, hundreds of restaurants and countless retailers depend on the tourist trade in the district. Having made huge investments in the Nilgiris, the tourism industry must seek to optimise its return by taking up tourism promotion in a big way. Tourism today is a major organised business, an industry, in which the stake holders are the numerous business enterprises — from hotels and airlines to retail traders and hawkers.
The wilderness... there is ample scope for nature tourism.
The Nilgiris can emerge as a leading convention centre in the country hosting international and national seminars and conferences round the year. It is worthwhile to remember that Ooty was the summer capital of the Madras presidency and had hosted, among numerous national and international meets, the U.N. Economic Commissioner for Asia and Far East meet and the All India Congress Committee's planning meet in the 1950s.
There is also abundant scope for nature tourism in the hills. There is also ample scope for promoting cultural and village tourism given the unique nature of the indigenous communities inhabiting the hills.
Tourism need not necessarily be a threat to the environment and ecology of the Nilgiris. On the contrary, a well conceived and organised tourism campaign will be the best insurance against further degradation of the hills. Conservation, after all, is nothing but sensible development.
The Nilgiris has entered an anxious era of landslides since the calamitous landslides of 1978. The frequency of landslides has increased in recent years with major slides occurring in 1993, 1995 and 2002. The worst ever landslide (on an average 1,000 metres in length and 150 metres in width and displacing three million tonnes of earth and rock debris) occurred in 1993. Geologists have recommended that extreme caution should be exercised in planning developmental activities in this geomorphologically fragile Nilgiri plateau!
What has been worrying geologists is the nature of landslides in recent times.
Geologists have been intrigued that such massive failures could take place in a rocky terrain with a thin mantle of soil in otherwise stable landforms.
Landslides are induced by natural and human factors. Nothing can be done to minimise the hazards brought about by natural factors in a geomorphologically sensitive terrain such as the Nilgiri plateau. However, the human factors which induce or aggravate landslides can be eliminated to minimise the hazards through studies which can evaluate the cumulative effects of all developmental activities "such as the construction of large cultural features, horticultural and agricultural improvements, massive consistent slope cuttings for roads, buildings, factories, interference with soil management and frequent changes in land use".
Indiscriminate extension of roads has been a main contributory factor for the growing geological instability of the district. Due to speedy completion of road projects, important geological considerations like selection of road alignment through reconnaissance and survey often do not get the attention they deserve. Again, due to considerations of economy and concern for speed, authorities have a tendency to restrict stabilisation, drainage and protective measures.
Though the increasing risks involved in extending roads any further in the Nilgiris have been realised, there is still need for reviewing the existing roads, particularly the highways, which have come under severe strain in recent years. It is imperative to survey such roads and monitor their stability regularly besides taking corrective wherever feasible.
As a long term measure to ensure geological stability, the possibility of constructing a tunnel from Burliyar to Coonoor, which has been mooted by geologists, needs to be seriously considered for two reasons. The slides that have taken place in the district are essentially soil/debris slides. Therefore, a road tunnel is a safe proposition. Besides, being eco-friendly, this can lead to savings in time and fuel costs as the volume of traffic per day is high, particularly during the summer season. A modern tunnel for a length of about 10 km is bound to be a major attraction for tourists.