—a Thoughtfox editorial—

At a time when people are at their pandemic-induced breaking point—thanks to mounting economic worries, a long accumulating social isolation, and an out-of-control fragmentation of their inner beings—what does the local administration of India’s tourist capital, Shimla, do? It ensures that those visiting its main attraction—the Mall Road—are relentlessly subjected to a stream of mostly incomprensible and repetitive noises via an oversize television set, which was mounted across from the public toilet a few years ago.

From the get-go, this enormous television set was nothing if not a visual monstrosity: completely incongruous with the part lush, part rocky, flow of the surrounding area; out of sync with the natural beauty and serenity for which not only Shimla but also the state of Himachal Pradesh itself has so far been a tourist draw. People from all over the country as well as from the rest of South Asia—large parts of which are insufferable urban traps—rush to Shimla to catch a breather, quite literally, whenever their pockets and occupations permit them. Instead of having to watch the increasingly lowbrow television after a grinding day—or to continue to labour away on their laptops, tablets, or smartphones—many of these tourists visit Shimla to relax; to unwind; to walk about through the green hills; and to partake of the nature’s quietude.

None of the above, of course, appeared to have registered with Shimla’s tasteless administrators. Indeed, it was anyway peculiar for the administration to have felt compelled somehow to install this expensive, tax-funded monstrosity on public land just when most humans—surely including Indians—had already been overloaded (work or no work) with screens of all sizes. In point of fact, one cannot imagine a single human walking through the Mall Road (or any other road, for that matter) without a compulsive personal recourse to at least one screen (usually a mobile phone): but very likely to more than one. That eye irritation factor aside, there is also no dearth of access to audio-visual material—including television channels—at any point of time once you step off the Mall Road itself and into a restaurant or bar by its side.

That is because—thanks to the global spread of the post-1950s American model of mass-scale foodery—there is not one eatery on the Mall Road that does not have at least one television set somewhere inside it. These in-house television sets are ostensibly meant for customers; but they are usually of paramount interest to their exhausted, underpaid workers. Indeed, aside from these telescreens, all these establishments (barring the quaint Indian Coffee House) are stuffed, usually illegally, with bass-supported stereo systems—and boy, do they love to ‘entertain’ their customers! Meanwhile, a Mall Road visitor is also frequently exposed to unwanted random music that unmonitored tourists—just as much as unmonitored workers at several roadside coffee-and-snack stalls—play publicly (and with regular impunity) on their smartphones and even boomboxes.

From the Queen of Hills to the Queen of Clutter?
The long and short of the above is that there is no dearth of mechanically generated audiovisual stimuli on the Mall Road—and there has not been for a very long time; and yet, Shimla’s tone-deaf administration chose to install this humongous, overlooking television set on this road relatively recently. Worse, it repeated that act twice over roughly within the same space: for there is another equipment of the same proportions a bare half-a-second climb up the stairs from the location of this very same Mall Road megascreen (on the Ridge, that is). And there is yet another monstrosity—inside the grotesque Indira Gandhi State Sports Complex (which is across from the Lift)—around a seven-minute walk up from the same spot on the Mall Road.

Whenever there is an exciting cricket match on display on this particular set, there is a veritable crowd clog outside the wall of the complex, because this whole area is relatively narrow and busy as it is. At any rate, within a tiny stretch of a bare 7-minute worth of a walk on and around the Mall Road, this legendary Queen of Hills named Shimla—otherwise thought to be a repository of nature’s charms—now stands disfigured by three oversize television sets. Good job, Shimla administration!

This overbearing visual clutter was as yet tolerable—what with the Indian citizen’s lifelong experience with bureaucratic high-handedness; but the balance tipped over to the realm of the unbearable once the administration turned on the main Mall Road’s TVzilla’s audio (and with a vehemence, too). That started in the guise of pushing COVID-related messages to the public—as if there was not already a surfeit of the same through our private screens and all the rest; however, it quickly gave way to an overwhelming amount of political and local commercial messaging.

In the run up to Diwali, this political and commercial advertising had reached a frenzy, of course; and this stream of advertising was frequently punctuated with “Happy Diwali” blares: altogether ensuring that no Mall Road walker leave the area without a ringing headache. Here, please do not forget that the Mall Road also has loudspeakers on a few spots—and these loudspeakers are also used off and on to make civic announcements.

Diwali is long gone, of course; but the administration-promoted audio-visual pollution via the TVzilla on the Mall Road has continued to persist (and it is ironically always jacked up when the tourist flow is greater—which in itself is a pretty noisy event). It is thus to be suspected that the administrators running this particular show receive some type of personal favours in return from the advertisers; either that, or that they fear that they would be treated unkindly by the local mercantile and political elite if they prevented the latter from subjecting the average person to unsolicited, intrusive advertising via these megascreens.

Generally, though, the local administration does not seem to much care about the average person anyway. That much should be clear from the substandard upkeep of the public toilet (and you will see a few ‘massacres’ if you cross the urinal area into the area meant for payment-based defecation); the lack of strict enforcement of the no-smoking rule (to a great extent on the Mall Road, but absolutely so in the bars along it); and an overly lavish developmental treatment of the Mall Road itself at the apparent expense of the rest of Shimla!

Be that as it may, the grievance concerning noise pollution in Shimla—while far from new—is only growing in prominence; and the administration would have to pay the price if it carries on the way it has been. On September 18, 2019, for instance, the Himachal Pradesh High Court had to issue “a contempt notice to the Sidhi Vinayak Sewa Mandal Trust for violating the prescribed noise pollution limits during ‘Ganesh- Chaturthi’ festival.” This had been preceded by the same court’s directive in July that year to Shimla’s Deputy Commissioner and Superintendent of Police “to file their personal affidavits on the plan to tackle noise pollution,” as The Times of India had then reported.

Along with an untold number of daily victims of the Mall Road’s noise pollution, Thoughtfox certainly hopes that the Honourable High Court would take a suo moto notice of these monstrous television sets—and order a complete ban at least on their audio; and that it would also set down highly limiting conditions within which these sets’ visual display could be permitted: always on a case-by-case basis, and via due permissions, until such time that these sets become obsolete, never to be replaced again.

But the Honourable High Court should go even further—and mandate regular administrative oversight of indoor noise levels inside the eateries and cafés just as much as at the roadside open stalls (which should not be allowed to play any music at all without the use of personal headphones or earphones). Finally, the Honourable High Court must make it clear which bureaucrats (not the individuals but the posts) would be held directly accountable should current noise levels, illegal stereos, and public playing of smartphone and boombox music persist on the Mall Road—and for that matter, across the state—and what penalties would be levied against them for failing to enforce anti-pollution curbs.

Background material

Berdik, Chris (with Puja Changoiwala) (March 23, 2020) “The Fight to Curb a Health Scourge in India: Noise Pollution” UNDARK (Downloaded from the following URL on April 9, 2021: https://undark.org/2020/03/23/india-noise-pollution/ )

Bodh, Anand (July 18, 2019) “HC directs Shimla DC, SP to submit plan to tackle noise pollution” The Times of India (Downloaded from the following URL on April 9, 2021: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/shimla/hc-directs-shimla-dc-sp-to-submit-plan-to-tackle-noise-pollution/articleshow/70268721.cms)

Chakrabarty, Roshni (February 24, 2019) “Over 1 billion risk permanent hearing loss from loud sounds, warns WHO: How noise pollution can damage your mind” India Today (Downloaded from the following URL on April 9, 2021: https://www.indiatoday.in/science/story/over-1-billion-risk-permanent-hearing-loss-from-loud-sounds-warns-who-how-noise-pollution-can-damage-your-mind-1463843-2019-02-24 )

Mehta, N. Singh (September 18, 2019) “‘Noise Pollution’; Himachal HC issues Contempt notice to the Defaulters” News Views Post (Downloaded from the following URL on April 9, 2021: http://www.newsviewspost.com/2019/09/18/noise-pollution-himachal-hc-issues-contempt-notice-to-the-defaulters/)