Manali Missives 47/2014 May Day, Yay Day!
Leaving Lent, Easter and the ecclesiastical calendar for a while, it has just passed May Day, and the Indian national election campaign is entering its final stages. May Day, called International Labour Day here, provided both of us with interesting experiences that together typify the project we’ve come to work on.
Paediatric consultant Lena was part of a team from Lady Willingdon Hospital that conducted a health clinic in a Tibetan School some kilometres downstream from Manali and on the other side of the Beas River.
Ecotheological consultant David joined a “Clean Up Manali campaign” conducted by the local Department of Tourism & Civil Aviation to give advice on what measures may work in a culture in which people are not inclined to clean up after themselves.
There is quite a significant expatriate Tibetan community in and around Manali. When China absorbed Tibet in 1950 (arguing, of course, that historically Tibet was a part of China) many Tibetans fled and settled in Himalayan India. The mountainous terrain is more reminiscent of home for them than the plains of India (although Manali, lying below the snow line, is much more heavily forested than much of Tibet), and many of the people in the Manali region and north towards Ladakh are racially, culturally and religiously more similar to Tibetans than are “plains Indians”. The headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration, (the Tibetan government in exile) was relocated to Dharamshala, a district headquarters located about 6 hours’ drive west of Manali, still in the state of Himachal Pradesh but distant enough from the border to facilitate security should the Chinese think of a covert operation. The Dalai Lama and his officials settled in McLeodGanj, a suburb of Dharamshala. But Manali, much closer to the Tibetan-Chinese border, was more accessible than Dharamshala for many ordinary Tibetan refugees.
Part of the responsibility of care for these refugees was and is, of course, medical care. That this has fallen, locally and at least partially, to what we in the West would term a “private hospital” - Lady Willingdon Hospital receives little if any government funding - should not play into the western argument about private versus government funding of health care. LWH was started as a clinic by the British government in India. It is now substantially a private concern, reliant upon payment-for-service by those who can afford it, and donations from organisations and individuals, many of them from abroad. In the local healthcare system it sits alongside public hospitals as Indian government and society grapple with their enormous healthcare demands.
Lena and the rest of LWH’s healthcare team drove, first in two vehicles then, when one sustained a puncture, crammed into the other, to a suspension bridge far narrower than the bridge pictured. The vehicle was also far larger than the one in the picture, and the bridge was only rated to bear 2 tonnes. That all made for very nervous crossing; undoubtedly the bridge was not designed with a 2 tonne vehicle carrying 10 people in mind! That the team escaped with the vehicle being scraped was a considerable relief. Making do with what one has is an admirable trait, but it can really push the boundaries of the sensible, and sometimes the possible!
Lena continues her story: “Having arrived at the school we were greeted by the headmistress/principal and offered some tea and biscuits. The team included a dentist, an optometrist, a nurse and 3 medical students from Toledo, Ohio, who had spent the previous 3 weeks at the hospital. These 3 students were of great help in examining the 250 or so pupils at the school. We were told that a lot of the pupils come from Ladakh, mostly from a region called Zanskar. 3 of the pupils had walked all the way, a journey of several hundred kilometres!
We had a very nice lunch and in the afternoon were offered some butter tea (I declined the offer, based on previous experiences of the same in Bhutan). We arrived back in Manali some time after 5 pm.”
In the meantime I (David) had joined a group of several hundred people at a place called Gulaba, some 20 kilometres north of Manali towards Rohtang Pass. This area was opened up for tourism over 20 years ago, but little infrastructure has been provided. In particular there was nowhere at Gulaba to dispose of rubbish. That, allied with the huge increase in packaging and use of disposable implements, and the Indian tradition of relying on people of the cleaning caste to tidy up after you, had created an eyesore in one of India’s main tourist attractions. (See once more the photo below, this time for the rubbish under the bridge.)
The new Deputy Director for Tourism and Civil Aviation in the Kullu District, based at Manali, has ambitions to make a difference. Although it is Indian General Election season he has organised a 3 day “Clean Up Manali Campaign”, the first day at Gulaba and the other 2 in Manali itself. At the last minute I was invited to participate as what amounted to an eco-tourism consultant. The principal of the Day Star School told the Deputy Director about me on Wednesday, I was invited to a meeting with him on Thursday at which I produced a 2 page paper on programs, such as “Clean Up Australia”, that have been developed in Australia, I gave a speech at a stakeholders meeting on Saturday and presented the Deputy Director with material on eco-tourism, and was chauffeured in the Sub District Magistrate’s (the top local government official) vehicle to Gulaba on Thursday. There a number of middle aged men (including myself) made speeches to several hundred volunteers, mostly school students and women’s groups. Some of the men (including myself) then joined in the clean up effort for a couple of hours, after which we all were driven to a grassy knoll and furnished with packed lunches. The volume of the packaging nearly exceeded the volume of the rubbish previously collected (!), but it was placed efficiently in bags and then into a truck carrying a skip that bore most of the the rest of the rubbish, leaving a number of passing horses, used for giving tourists from various Indian cities a ride, very disappointed!
It was a start, both for me in Manali’s public sphere, and those wanting to change attitudes in that sphere to something more eco- and tourist-friendly. Such starts have, I’m told in resigned, cynical tones, been made before. However, having started a project that didn’t last during my previous stint in India I am determined that this will be different! The week ended with a very nice email from an Australian medical student who recently spent several weeks in Manali, informing me that a group his trip was funded by had been approached by an Australian medical environmental interest group who want to raise money for LWH on account of the role it plays in environmental sustainability around Manali. We already have a couple of what we think are excellent ideas for how to spend any money that might be forthcoming. We may soon have even more to share with the Deputy Director of Manali’s Tourist and Civil Aviation authority.
Lena and David Reichardt
Leaving Lent, Easter and the ecclesiastical calendar for a while, it has just passed May Day, and the Indian national election campaign is entering its final stages. May Day, called International Labour Day here, provided both of us with interesting experiences that together typify the project we’ve come to work on.
Paediatric consultant Lena was part of a team from Lady Willingdon Hospital that conducted a health clinic in a Tibetan School some kilometres downstream from Manali and on the other side of the Beas River.
Ecotheological consultant David joined a “Clean Up Manali campaign” conducted by the local Department of Tourism & Civil Aviation to give advice on what measures may work in a culture in which people are not inclined to clean up after themselves.
There is quite a significant expatriate Tibetan community in and around Manali. When China absorbed Tibet in 1950 (arguing, of course, that historically Tibet was a part of China) many Tibetans fled and settled in Himalayan India. The mountainous terrain is more reminiscent of home for them than the plains of India (although Manali, lying below the snow line, is much more heavily forested than much of Tibet), and many of the people in the Manali region and north towards Ladakh are racially, culturally and religiously more similar to Tibetans than are “plains Indians”. The headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration, (the Tibetan government in exile) was relocated to Dharamshala, a district headquarters located about 6 hours’ drive west of Manali, still in the state of Himachal Pradesh but distant enough from the border to facilitate security should the Chinese think of a covert operation. The Dalai Lama and his officials settled in McLeodGanj, a suburb of Dharamshala. But Manali, much closer to the Tibetan-Chinese border, was more accessible than Dharamshala for many ordinary Tibetan refugees.
Part of the responsibility of care for these refugees was and is, of course, medical care. That this has fallen, locally and at least partially, to what we in the West would term a “private hospital” - Lady Willingdon Hospital receives little if any government funding - should not play into the western argument about private versus government funding of health care. LWH was started as a clinic by the British government in India. It is now substantially a private concern, reliant upon payment-for-service by those who can afford it, and donations from organisations and individuals, many of them from abroad. In the local healthcare system it sits alongside public hospitals as Indian government and society grapple with their enormous healthcare demands.
Lena and the rest of LWH’s healthcare team drove, first in two vehicles then, when one sustained a puncture, crammed into the other, to a suspension bridge far narrower than the bridge pictured. The vehicle was also far larger than the one in the picture, and the bridge was only rated to bear 2 tonnes. That all made for very nervous crossing; undoubtedly the bridge was not designed with a 2 tonne vehicle carrying 10 people in mind! That the team escaped with the vehicle being scraped was a considerable relief. Making do with what one has is an admirable trait, but it can really push the boundaries of the sensible, and sometimes the possible!
Lena continues her story: “Having arrived at the school we were greeted by the headmistress/principal and offered some tea and biscuits. The team included a dentist, an optometrist, a nurse and 3 medical students from Toledo, Ohio, who had spent the previous 3 weeks at the hospital. These 3 students were of great help in examining the 250 or so pupils at the school. We were told that a lot of the pupils come from Ladakh, mostly from a region called Zanskar. 3 of the pupils had walked all the way, a journey of several hundred kilometres!
We had a very nice lunch and in the afternoon were offered some butter tea (I declined the offer, based on previous experiences of the same in Bhutan). We arrived back in Manali some time after 5 pm.”
In the meantime I (David) had joined a group of several hundred people at a place called Gulaba, some 20 kilometres north of Manali towards Rohtang Pass. This area was opened up for tourism over 20 years ago, but little infrastructure has been provided. In particular there was nowhere at Gulaba to dispose of rubbish. That, allied with the huge increase in packaging and use of disposable implements, and the Indian tradition of relying on people of the cleaning caste to tidy up after you, had created an eyesore in one of India’s main tourist attractions. (See once more the photo below, this time for the rubbish under the bridge.)
The new Deputy Director for Tourism and Civil Aviation in the Kullu District, based at Manali, has ambitions to make a difference. Although it is Indian General Election season he has organised a 3 day “Clean Up Manali Campaign”, the first day at Gulaba and the other 2 in Manali itself. At the last minute I was invited to participate as what amounted to an eco-tourism consultant. The principal of the Day Star School told the Deputy Director about me on Wednesday, I was invited to a meeting with him on Thursday at which I produced a 2 page paper on programs, such as “Clean Up Australia”, that have been developed in Australia, I gave a speech at a stakeholders meeting on Saturday and presented the Deputy Director with material on eco-tourism, and was chauffeured in the Sub District Magistrate’s (the top local government official) vehicle to Gulaba on Thursday. There a number of middle aged men (including myself) made speeches to several hundred volunteers, mostly school students and women’s groups. Some of the men (including myself) then joined in the clean up effort for a couple of hours, after which we all were driven to a grassy knoll and furnished with packed lunches. The volume of the packaging nearly exceeded the volume of the rubbish previously collected (!), but it was placed efficiently in bags and then into a truck carrying a skip that bore most of the the rest of the rubbish, leaving a number of passing horses, used for giving tourists from various Indian cities a ride, very disappointed!
It was a start, both for me in Manali’s public sphere, and those wanting to change attitudes in that sphere to something more eco- and tourist-friendly. Such starts have, I’m told in resigned, cynical tones, been made before. However, having started a project that didn’t last during my previous stint in India I am determined that this will be different! The week ended with a very nice email from an Australian medical student who recently spent several weeks in Manali, informing me that a group his trip was funded by had been approached by an Australian medical environmental interest group who want to raise money for LWH on account of the role it plays in environmental sustainability around Manali. We already have a couple of what we think are excellent ideas for how to spend any money that might be forthcoming. We may soon have even more to share with the Deputy Director of Manali’s Tourist and Civil Aviation authority.
Lena and David Reichardt
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