When 'development' is a zero-sum game

A combination of political ambition and religious nationalism is destroying Uttarakhand's potential, not least for the state's inhabitants

Significantly improved road and air connectivity and an increasingly prosperous middle class have transformed domestic tourism in India over the past two decades. At many monuments and places of tourist interest, domestic visitors outnumber foreign visitors, a trend visible well before Covid-19. It is a pity, then, to witness the stark deterioration of popular tourist destinations as a result of unresolved tensions between conservation and development. This is the equivalent of damaging an industry’s most irreplaceable capital assets.

The irony of this dichotomy is that there are mostly losers. Recently, for instance, Uttarakhand brought its capital city Dehradun to a standstill