The Architecture of Change: Construction, Destruction, and the Meaning of Development in the Himalayas
By Austin Cope ‘15, Jagori Grameen Fellow 2018-2020
They start their work just after sunrise, walking steadily from the bus stop to their job site, together in small groups. The men are dressed in faded pants and shirts, their hair well-combed and their shirts freshly washed; the women wear brightly colored saris, veils, or scarves covering their head and occasionally their faces. In summer they wear plastic sandals, in winter they wear old sneakers or rubber loafers. Sometimes the women hold babies or small children. The men smoke beedis throughout the day, sitting on unfinished walls or on clusters of broken stone along the roadsides. All of them wear the same tired expression on their faces; it is clear that they know about hard work in ways that many others don’t.
The laborers carry bricks slowly but steadily, placing them in threes or fours on their heads. They move the cement in the same manner, pouring the dry powder from large woven polypropylene bags and mixing it with water and other materials in a gas-powered mixer. They then scoop the mixed concrete into wide plastic bowls, one at a time, and carry them on their heads as they move between the machine and the growing building.
The buildings begin with a concrete-and-stone foundation, then a roof of reinforced concrete, held up by concrete columns. Slowly, the walls take form, brick by brick, with cement mortar between the bricks and more concrete poured around the walls. Then they fill in the other parts, like the windows, doors, and trim. It’s a slow but steady transformation of what was once a garden, or a field, but it’s now becoming a new building.
I pass the workers on my way to my office, the city, or field visits. They don’t make eye contact with me. We seem to exist in separate worlds, even though physically, we’re right next to each other. Other people pass on their motorcycles, or in their cars, honking as they drive around the next bend, but giving no acknowledgment to the builders. Many of these workers are not local—they come from outside of Himachal, from other North Indian states like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, or Bihar. They often build houses or private buildings, but they also build other infrastructure like ditches, bridges, or retaining walls. Some of them are paid by the government, some by homeowners, and some in ways that may not be clear or fair (though I don’t have access to local data, labor trafficking, wage theft, and other forms of exploitation are known issues in India). Regardless, they keep working, many for only a few dollars per day. They work almost all throughout the year, but especially during the fall, winter, and spring, when the weather is cooler and drier than in the summer and monsoon months.
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A traditional mud house sits vacant in the mountains above Rakkar in January 2020. Some local families live in houses such as this temporarily, when their sheep goats graze in the high country in the summer.
A multistory concrete building under construction near Rakkar in February 2020. The use of concrete in architecture has changed the landscape of the village, especially in the last decade or so.
When you arrive in India, the sheer amount of concrete might be one of the first things you notice. It seems to be everywhere, from houses to apartment buildings to roads and bridges. When I left the Deharadun airport (in the North Indian state of Uttrakhand) after my arrival, the concrete structures were some of the first images I remember. Giant bridges spanned the headwaters of the Ganga River, and brand-new concrete barriers lined the steep hilly roads around Mussoorie, where I studied Hindi for a month. Traveling around Delhi, too, the amount of concrete is almost mind-bending. Footpaths, bridges, highway overpasses, houses, apartment buildings, retaining walls, utility poles, fence posts—they’re almost all made with concrete. This is true in almost any city, but Delhi’s land size and population makes the scale feel much larger. Even when I moved to Rakkar, it was similar—the majority of the buildings in the village —and around the greater Dharamshala area—are built with concrete. The streets are lined with cement brand names: Ambuja, Shree, Aditya Birla, UltraTech, ACC, JK Cement … the companies paint their logos on empty walls and on the metal doors that roll shut over storefronts.
After China, India is the second largest producer of concrete in the world, as measured by the capacity of its factories. Indian factories are able to produce over 400 million metric tons of cement per year, and though they haven’t yet hit full capacity, the demand is increasing, especially as the Indian government carries out more infrastructure projects and schemes. The projects are at times volatile— they tend to be marked by political posturing, allegations of corruption, and fluctuating supply and demand—but they are continuing. The current government has taken credit for a long list of projects and schemes in the sectors of transportation, public works, and housing, as well as for a recently finished 597-foot concrete statue in the state of Gujarat.
Subsidized or not, concrete is a popular building material for several reasons. It is cheap, durable, and relatively quick to build with. It can be transported easily, molded into many different kinds of structures, and reinforced steel rods can keep it from collapsing under its own weight. It can create huge buildings with tens or hundreds of stories, but it also works for much smaller structures—fence posts, septic tanks, or garden walls. Combined with brick—another ubiquitous construction material in North India especially—it creates solid and affordable buildings. Finally, concrete is often more available than wood or other materials, since forests are not common in North India—and are being depleted in other parts of the country.
Around Dharamshala, concrete buildings are going up at an almost dizzying rate. In the past 10-20 years, the city has become an increasingly popular tourist destination, and many people are coming from larger cities like Delhi and Chandigarh to escape crowds and pollution. Hotels, homestays, and apartments are in high demand, and concrete is the first choice to build with. Locals say it is often more lucrative for landowners to lease their land for buildings than to use it for farming, so rice and wheat fields are giving way to new apartments and sleek hotels. Further from the main city, in the villages where tourists and outsiders are fewer, concrete houses are also being built. Peoples’ families are growing, their incomes are rising, and they want to have more of their own space. They use concrete to add onto their existing houses, or build new buildings on their properties.
There hasn’t always been this much concrete, however. In this part of Himachal, for hundreds of years, the local vernacular architecture was based around mud—more specifically, adobe or clay bricks covered with earthen plaster. The mud buildings look much different from their concrete counterparts. Mud houses’ walls are thick and textured instead of narrow and smooth; their floors are often packed earth instead of hard marble or granite, and their roofs are made with slate tiles and bamboo frames instead of painted steel. Inside, mud houses often have chulhas (small round fireplaces for cooking and keeping warm), molded benches, shelves for holding items, and skylights in their slate roofs to reduce the need for artificial light. Concrete houses, however, usually must be heated with electric space heaters, cooled with electric fans, and lit in the night and sometimes even in the day with electric lights. Of course, depending on each family’s preference, there are variations among the houses. Even though some families mix the two styles (e.g. a concrete room added onto an older mud house), the differences in the architectural styles are clear. The concrete buildings have steadily transformed the built landscape of the area.
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Stacks of concrete bags line a highway outside of Chandigargh. The Indian government has invested millions of dollars in infrastructure projects over the past 10-20 years.
The vernacular mud architecture has inspired its share of architects and designers. Didi Contractor, a self-taught but nationally-recognized American architect and proponent of eco-friendly mud buildings, has lived in Rakkar since the 1970s. She has designed buildings for several local NGOs and area residents, and she teaches young architects her trade and her techniques. I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations with her, and some of my friends have rented space in her houses. My current landlord, whose family has lived in and around Rakkar for several generations, is also trained in the craft of building mud houses. He has built houses for Didi’s clients, has carried on the trade himself, and has shared it with other locals. Many of their clients come from cities or other states in India, and have the mud houses built as second homes or vacation rentals. These houses sometimes contain small amounts of concrete to make them stronger or more resistant to water. However, the costs of these custom homes are often quite high.
Proponents of mud architecture view it as superior to concrete for various reasons. Most importantly, it is more ecologically sustainable: it is locally sourced, which reduces the need to transport heavy materials; the adobe insulates well, reducing the amount of energy required for heating and cooling, and it has fewer toxic chemicals in it than in concrete, which reduces the impacts on the environment as it ages. On a more spiritual level, Didi says the mud buildings can exist more in harmony with the natural surroundings, and they don’t create as much of a separation between humans and the landscape. Based on my conversations with Didi, her apprentices, and my landlord, they hope to be part of a kind of revolution, or a renaissance, of mud architecture.
Despite their efforts, however, the majority of popular opinion in Himachal has been largely shifting away from the mud and towards the concrete. This is largely because of government subsidies or development programs, but it’s also because people tend to see concrete as more modern and practical. When I talk to many locals about the difference between mud and concrete, the first thing they mention is maintenance. Mud houses require regular upkeep and repair (especially during monsoon season), while concrete doesn’t, at least for the short-term. The soft walls and slate-tile roofs of mud houses aren’t always watertight, and sometimes water drips into kitchens or bedrooms when it rains. Mud houses are also prone to falling down or becoming dangerously unstable, since their internal structures don’t contain the amount of metal and solid columns that the new concrete buildings do.
Some of the poorest people in the region live in mud buildings that are centuries old, and their families don’t have the resources to repair or replace them. The work of patching and repairing the mud walls often falls to the women in the families, who add it to the long list of other household chores their families expect them to do. Over the past few months, Jagori Grameen, the feminist non-governmental organization where my Shansi Fellowship is based, has worked on a campaign to help some of these families access government subsidies to rebuild or replace their mud houses with concrete. As I have accompanied Jagori’s team members to villages around the district, we have visited people whose houses are damaged to the point where they are hardly livable. In December, over a thousand people from local villages came to a public hearing to request that local officials review their applications for government subsidies and help them rebuild their houses with concrete. As I compare their situation to the Didi Contractor’s clients’, it’s clear that the most avid proponents of mud architecture are often not the ones who have to take care of it.
The difference between mud and concrete buildings is even evident is in the language. Hindi and the local languages use the word कच्चा, or kacchha, which means “raw” or “unripe,” to describe mud buildings. The word पक्का, or pakka, meaning “strong,” “solid,” or “ripe,” describes concrete ones. To many people, especially in villages or rural areas, a kaccha ghar, or mud house, seems to evoke backwardness or poverty, while a pakka ghar is often accompanied by a description of other ways that their family is doing well economically. Though these differences are subtle, subjective, and difficult to fully understand as a foreigner, they are some of the impressions I have had.
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A concrete bench under construction in Rakkar, January 2020.
People wait for a meal outside of a traditional mud house during a festival in the village of Rakkar. Buildings such as this are often built to house an extended family.
For the past year and a half, I have tried to understand this reality of rural India. To me, the stark differences in old and new architecture feel like tension between a centuries-old agrarian or pastoral way of life and a more modern, industrialized lifestyle. Compared to concrete, I like the mud buildings much more. Some of my most cherished memories as a Shansi Fellow have taken place in mud houses. From eating mutton and rice next to a co-worker’s chulha during his birthday party in the December after I arrived in India, to dancing in my co-fellow’s living room in her rented mud house last summer, to sharing jokes and riddles next to the fire with my landlord’s kids in their mud house … these buildings evoke the coziness and rustic feel of the mountains and the landscapes. In comparison to mud, concrete feels cold, hard, empty and impersonal, and there’s little about it that makes me feel truly comfortable. The new concrete buildings feel out of place next to the terraced fields, mud barns, cow-sheds, and stone-filled rivers throughout the region.
This is different from how I imagined the architectural landscape before I came, and likely different from many outsiders’ expectations of life in the Himalayas. I think that many people (especially foreigners, but likely some urban and suburban Indians as well) still imagine rural India as rustic, simple, and “traditional”, with old mud buildings, cooking fires, and packed dirt courtyards. I often sense a collective nostalgia, a longing to leave the “hustle and bustle” of modern life for something “simpler and quieter” that is “closer to nature.” The mud buildings line up much more with this nostalgic vision than do the concrete ones. (I think a similar imagination drives foreigners to wear flowing cotton pants and baggy printed shirts as they tour around India, oblivious to the fact that no one in Indian villages actually wears that type of clothing.) As people come to Dharamshala and the surrounding area, they have to come to terms with the dissonance between the mud and the concrete architecture, as well with as the clear boundaries between the wild yet serene landscapes of the Himalayas and the increasing traffic, crowds, and pollution that accompany rapid development. For many of us, it is quite difficult, and most outsiders don’t stay for good.
When I ask Himachali friends and co-workers about this dissonance, I get even more complex answers. It seems that they, too, feel it, but at a deeper and more practical level. The new buildings represent more money coming in, and change, and they are solid and don’t leak or fall down. For many local families, that physical and financial stability is a relief. On a deeper level, too, I think the new development may represent a desire to look towards the future. As beautiful and cozy as the vernacular architecture is, it still speaks of the past, and for many people, the past hasn’t been as free or as hopeful as the future might be. They are ready to appreciate comforts associated with a lifestyle where women have more time to pursue activities that don’t require cooking over an open fire or patching roofs and walls, for example, and children don’t have to sleep with rainwater dripping through the roof or into their beds.
And yet, seeing places disappear—sometimes the homes, literally, that were part of your childhood—can be difficult. The forests, fields, and goat herds that my friends and colleagues grew up around are disappearing with each new concrete building, and the old houses lining the narrow village paths are becoming fewer and fewer with each new concrete courtyard. I sense the pain in some people’s gaze when we walk past the large resorts and hotels that have appeared around Rakkar in the past one or two years. In my own way, I can identify: I am from a rural part of my own country, and I have watched places and landscapes associated with my childhood become new development that often doesn’t fit with the landscape. I, too, have mixed feelings about the changes: in some ways, they mean that there are new ideas, new opportunities, and new people in the communities. But in other ways, they mean that the older way of life, which is often simpler, quieter, and maybe more in harmony with nature, has disappeared… reduced only to a collective nostalgia.
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Bags of concrete outside of Chandigargh, as seen through a bus window.
In general, I think the changing architecture in Himachal represents one of the major questions facing the world today: the question of “development.” What does the word— or the idea— actually mean? Who defines it, and how is it measured? How does it manage the tension between the old and the new, the local and the imported, the practical and the traditional? These are not easy questions to refine, let alone to answer. Entire courses of study have been built around the topic, and NGOs, governments, civil society groups, and individuals devote their entire missions to promoting their own visions of “development.” From small villages in rural India to national governments and multinational bodies like the United Nations or the World Bank, the world is not only trying to figure out how to define development, but also how to do it in ways that can balance humans’ need for safety, security, and empowerment with respect for and limitations of the environment. Of course, those are difficult goals to balance, and like many people in the world, I think we can do a lot better.
Various forms of these questions have run through my mind almost every day since I have lived in India. They often distract me as I sit in meetings, or walk through villages, or cook in my kitchen. They’ve evolved and shifted depending where I am and what I’m doing, but I think about them all the same. As I read the news, scroll through social media, or talk with local farmers, I remember that many people in the world are asking themselves these questions too.
I do know one thing, though: the question of development and its implications wasn’t so clearly on my mind before I started my Shansi fellowship. Living in Rakkar has brought me clear examples, experiences, memories, and questions about the state of the world and the direction we’re all going. It’s forced me to reflect upon and re-evaluate myself, my own life, and the life of my family and my ancestors. It’s also made me realize that it’s not only about me. In the midst of the economy, politics, and social structures of a much larger and different country than my own, my personal views and opinions don’t have, and should not have, too much bearing. Even as I write this, I realize how much more I have to learn.
And each day, the construction around the village—and the district, and the state, and the country, and the world—continues, brick by brick, rod by rod, stone by stone….and, of course, bag by bag of cement. The workers’ hands are worn and callused from the tools and the materials and the labor. I’m quite sure abstract and elitist attempts to define “development” are not on their minds, but I think that in many ways, they know the answers to the questions in a much more genuine way than I ever will. This knowledge is humbling, and it has shaped the way I look at the world.
Around sunset, the workers leave their sites and board public buses to go back to their encampments at the edges of the towns. The camps are separated from the local communities, semi-permanent but not entirely legal. The shelters are made of bamboo, tarps, wooden sticks, and corrugated metal, and empty cement bags patch holes in the roofs. There the builders cook their dinners, wash their clothes, and prepare for the next day of work. This cycle continues all across India, day by day, month by month, season by season, year by year.
Where it is all going, it’s hard to say for sure. But, at this moment in time, who can?
Bags of unused cement sit in front of a construction site in Delhi.
Bibliography:
Bahga, Sarbjit. “Didi Contractor: A Self-Taught Architect Who Builds In Mud, Bamboo & Stone.”
India Architecture News, 11 May 2018.
“Cement Industry in India.” India Brand Equity Foundation, October 2019.
Mars, Roman. “Built On Sand.” 99 Percent Invisible, 09 July 2019. Audio.
Roy, Mathieu. “The Dispossessed.” Screenwriters Richard Brouillette and Benoit Aquin. Golden Egg Production. Screened at Dharamshala International Film Festival, 03 November 2018.
Sofiya, D. “Indian Cement Sector to Grow At a CAGR of 10% over the Next 5 Years.” Aditya Trading Solutions, 26 Dec 2018.
Vaitheesvaran, Bharani. “No slowdown in cement, headed for ‘Golden Period’: N Srinivasan.” Economic Times, 19 August 2019.
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Special thanks to independent journalist Ankita Anand for her editing and feedback on this report.