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The scenic hill town of Darjeeling is famous for its 3T's - Tea, Timber, and Tourists. Originally established as a British sanatorium, it quickly earned the nickname 'Queen of Hills' and has become a popular tourist spot. The charming town welcomes visitors with stunning landscapes, drifting clouds, and pleasant weather, along with forested ridges adorned with numerous hotels, guesthouses, and homestays that cater to every luxury a tourist desires.
However, the other side of this hill station is marked by the struggles of Darjeeling’s residents, who face challenges with basic water and sanitation services.
Darjeeling has become synonymous with water scarcity, still depending on the water supply system set up by the British government between 1910 and 1915 for just 10,000 residents. However, the city's current population is around 118,805 (Census of India, 2011). This unexpected growth has posed a major challenge in the proper planning and installation of crucial municipal services like water and sewage systems.
The city presents a dual effect, offering increased options for accommodating tourists, while also raising concerns about the capacity of the city to absorb this rampant growth and the pressure it exerts on municipal services.
Darjeeling is located on a landscape with uneven layers, leading most homes to depend on stacked stairs and narrow, slippery paths for access. The electric wires and water pipelines are intertwined, demonstrating a harmonious coexistence that highlights a symbiotic relationship between fire and water elements.
During our field-based study for developing the city sanitation plan for Darjeeling, an interview with Bandana, a sanitation worker, or Nirmal Bandhu where bandhu literally translates to friend or brother and is the state equivalent of the Swacch Saathi under the Swacch Bharat Mission), conveyed a notable emphasis on the challenges of managing household solid waste during the monsoon. “Sab log kachara jhora mai dal dete hain.” (People usually throw household waste into the drains going down the hill, which we learned was a common practice).
In Darjeeling, jhoras are local stormwater drains or flood harvesting systems that play a vital role in managing excess water during storms. Similar to the Aahar Pynes in Bihar and Nullahs in the northern regions, these systems help to prevent flooding and protect the local environment.
This drain, among others, leads to one of the most visited sites, RockVille Garden, a picturesque tourist location known for its natural waterfall. The mismanaged disposal of waste has further exacerbated the problem of solid waste, creating a mountain of waste amid the scenic Eastern Himalayan mountain range.
Many public and community toilets throughout the city are out of order and missing essential facilities like clean toilet seats, septic tanks, steady water supply, handwashing stations and electricity. This results in human waste directly entering open drains that flow into downstream water bodies, and in some instances, waste is left unflushed, posing a serious public health risk.
The city relies on natural springs, rainwater collection and an inconsistent municipal water supply, with the administration completely relying on the British-based water supply systems which have reached their utmost potential.
The floating population has quadrupled in the recent time, and Darjeeling has struggled with severe traffic congestion for several years, particularly during the tourist season.
Implementing central schemes such as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 1.0 and 2.0 and Swachh Bharat Mission is anticipated to generate positive changes regarding water supply and sanitation practices.
However, there is room for further improvement, especially since current water sources, like Senchal Lake and natural springs, need to be augmented to effectively cater to the burgeoning population.
The condition of the community toilets and public toilets in the city also reflects the lack of awareness about safe hygiene practices among residents, raising questions about the effectiveness of the investments. The efforts made by state-aided schemes 'Jal Dharo-Jal Bharo' to build citizens’ awareness of rainwater harvesting and its usage have shown the potential Darjeeling holds towards addressing water scarcity with almost every household practising rainwater harvesting.
Samaj, a community-based organisation that functions at the grassroots level, has emerged across wards in recent years making water everybody’s business irrespective of caste, religion or community. Each household connected with the Samaj contributes a yearly fee for maintaining the perennial source and can fill the daily quota of 60 litres of water.
To sustain life in such difficult terrain, communities must adopt nature-based systems, which are scientifically tested, scalable, replicable and cost-effective in the long run. A more decentralised approach for handling both liquid and solid waste will uplift the longevity of the natural springs, and cleanliness of stormwater drains while mitigating the chances of any potential outbreaks of sanitation-based diseases.
The hardships faced by the city of Darjeeling in providing hospitality services to the tourists are also resonated by other prominent hill stations and rapidly urbanising cities of the Indian Himalayan Region.
Considering these gaps in service deliveries, there lies great potential for knowledge sharing on safe sanitation practices from other hill cities and towns located in the Indian Himalayan region.
A few recommendations towards making the city water-wise are as follows:
1. Promotion of sound water and waste governance practices will require alignment of policies, guidelines, and goals at local, state and central levels encouraging stakeholder participation for effective policies to create an informed decision.
2. It is necessary to create innovative financing through acquiring knowledge about and implementing PPPs using models from other sectors; providing incentive-based funding provisions under state / central governments; tied funds mentioned for water and sanitation in the 15th Finance Commission can also be leveraged to enhance the city’s need for infrastructural integrity for both sanitation services and building the resilience of municipal service deliveries.
3. Innovation and technologies will need to improve data accuracy with state-of-the-art monitoring tools aligned with the Internet of Things; adopt and scale existing innovations to improve the reachability of service deliveries; adopt circularity whenever it is feasible for the longevity and sustainability of inter-dependable income groups.
4. Planning and evaluation will require metrics and an explicit feedback loop to guide policy planning and advocacy; profit from alliances that increase its capability to withstand inflation and develop resilience against loopholes such as corruption.
5. Research and capacity building will require investment in human resources through continuous investment in training to improve competencies; equity and gender considerations in capacity development activities; peer-to-peer knowledge sharing of successful models depicting similar living conditions; and information, education and communication campaigns on sanitation, water and hygiene, to bring about behavioural change toward safe sanitation in the long run.
Tanya Ahmed and Sachin Sahani are programme officers with the NIUA. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.