Nepalese town takes historic step ... backwards

The slate steps at the entrance to the city that were instrumental in keeping cars out of the city center.

( Asad Badruddin (Tufts University) Student Correspondent Corps / )

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BANDIPUR, Nepal — The congestion and pollution created by massive vehicular traffic james in urban areas around the world have prompted some cities to ban cars, trucks and buses altogether from parts of their downtown areas.

While such efforts are not uncommon in affluent Europe and America, they are harder to find in developing countries where the focus is first and foremost on economic growth.

But Bandipur, Nepal is an exception.

Five hours by bus from the capital of Kathmandu, Bandipur is trying to balance economic growth with the prevention of pollution and the preservation of heritage. Vehicles are barred from entering the town and people must walk to reach their final destinations.

Bandipur is a story of boom-bust-boom development. For hundreds of years, it was located along a trade route which connected India and Nepal. The location benefited the town’s large merchant and trader population.

But in 1973, the Prithvi Highway was built from Kathmandu to Pokhara, a city further west of Bandipur. While trucks and buses could now move about the country more quickly, Bandipur suffered because it was not on the new highway.

Krishna Kumar Pradhan has spent all 60 of his years in Bandipur and has been deeply involved in the community’s development and evolution. After the construction of the Prithvi highway,  Bandipur “was a ghost town” as many people migrated to other cities that were more economically viable, Pradhan said.

Eventually a road was built linking Bandipur to the Prithvi highway, and the town could foresee a recovery. With the arrival of the new, paved road, some townspeople wanted to convert the dirt road through Bandipur into “a proper road.” The Bandipur Eco-Cultural Tourism Project began to organize the paving of the road.

But not everyone wanted to take that step toward modernization.

Some people argued for banning cars from the center of the town,  a radical idea in that part of the world. Members of the Bandipur Social Development Committee, which was in charge of remodeling the town, had studied in universities in Europe and America, and had a keen sense of what cars would mean for a small town like Bandipur.  Other towns, like Thamel in Kathmandu, were coping with roads that are too small for the number of cars that pass by daily, causing congestion and a lot of pollution.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/study-abroad/100711/nepal-economy-development-tourism-kathmandu-bandipur