Articles by Ashwani Sharma

For most middle and low income urban families, the only way to cope with the rising inflation has been to slash expenditure on food.

A former BJP MLA from one of the towns expects the elected bodies to ensure better execution of works and funds utilisation. People are not very hopeful, though.

The heavy tourist influx during peak summers and weekends negates any and all traffic mobility plans the city administration draws up. Will the new SITRAM be any different?

Ignored and untapped till now, the potential of solar energy to power Shimla and other urban centres is being realised only now .

Maintenance of its British-era tunnels and creation of new ones could be effective solutions to mobility challenges in the hill town. But clearly, government priorities lie elsewhere.

As per official estimates, there are more than 31,000 unauthorised buildings in major hill towns in Himachal Pradesh, with Shimla constituting 30 per cent of these.

Extreme weather events triggered by climate change pose huge risk to life in Himachal Pradesh. To mitigate these risks, the state is now all set to install a first-of-its-kind automatic ‘Early Warning System’ in Kullu district.

With the hill town shut, the administration was able to introduce better water conservation systems and improve operational efficiencies. What can other ULBs in the region learn from it?

Himachal Pradesh has seen nearly 80 per cent loss of livelihoods, both rural and urban. The government is now pinning hopes on opening up construction and other infrastructure projects.

For the past six weeks, Shimla’s 260 odd sanitation workers are putting in extra hours to clean and maintain sewerage lines, hoping to keep its 2.3 lakh citizens safe from infection.

Sirmauris, as natives from Shillai are known, have been living for years in Shimla working as porters, tourist guides, taxi drivers, private security and waiters. So have the roughly 8000 porters from Kashmir. But none of them have faced such a financial crisis ever before, unable to meet even their basic food needs.

The worry among Himachal’s fruit growers is not just that the coronavirus lockdown will affect the apple orchards, but also the farms growing cherries, pomegranate and green almonds, all of which normally hit the market in July-August.