Infrastructural built-up and delinking of places: Story of Bilaspur Town in Himachal

In the Himalayan region, where the land is steeped in the stories of Devi and Devtas, modern structures now dominate the landscape. Among these, new roads and highways have captured the spotlight, promising connection, mobility, economic growth, and the allure of progress. The shift from winding footpaths to sleek four-lane highways is hailed as a marvel of science and engineering. Highways, in particular, are seen as the boldest symbols of development, raising hopes for speed, prosperity, and integration with the wider world. Yet, beneath these promises, the reality is more complex. Roads reshape lives in unexpected ways, their impact uneven across regions and communities. For some, they disrupt livelihoods, fracture connections, and unsettle the rhythms of daily life. Nowhere is this more vivid than in the story of Bilaspur town in Himachal Pradesh.

Figure 1- Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh is India’s first planned hill town along Satluj River and Govind Sagar Lake

For a long time, the highway through Bilaspur was not much on people’s minds. It was simply there, running through the town without announcing itself, maintaining connectivity, drawing travellers in, and providing for the everyday needs of the people of Bilaspur and beyond. Buses stopped near markets, drivers parked for tea, tourists rested before climbing further into the mountains, and shopkeepers waited for the familiar rhythm of traffic. The road did not rush. It lingered, and in doing so, it facilitated the town’s thriving. Bilaspur itself has lived with loss before. When the Bhakra Dam came up, around the 1950s, the old town submerged, and people were forced to move uphill and settle near the Gobind Sagar Lake. What emerged over time was a new town on the hill, fragile but functioning, held together by the older highway that connected it to Manali, Chandigarh, and nearby districts.

That road became the town’s backbone. Livelihoods grew around it in the form of dhabas, small hotels, repair shops, transport availability, and local markets prospered because vehicles and passengers stopped in this bustling place. The new Kiratpur-Manali four-lane changed this relationship. Built to reduce travel time and increase speed, it did what it was meant to do for long-distance movement. But it did not pass through Bilaspur. It went around it. Slowly, traffic disappeared from the town. Public and private buses stopped entering. Travellers were dropped far away at Mandi-Bhurari Chowk, and many never made the extra effort to come into Bilaspur. What was once on the way became off the route. The changes are evidently visible along the older highway. Now, the shops have been closed for days. Dhabas open briefly, serving only a few local passengers. Transport activity has thinned. As evening sets in, the road becomes quiet in a way it never was before. People speak of feeling unsafe after dark, something they never worried about when the road was alive at all hours. The silence is not just about traffic; it is about uncertainty settling in. The construction of the new four-lane highways is thus a story of the generation of new places and the deterioration of older routes.

Figure 2- The new Highway passing through Bilaspur

In villages like Kangoo, the impact is even more acute. Government buses have been rerouted or reduced, leaving students to struggle for a way to school. Daily travel has become both difficult and costly, as public and private transport now bypass the village. The four-lane highway, meant to ease movement, has instead made journeys harder for many. Construction brought blasting and slope-cutting, damaging local roads and making landslides more common. The hills bear fresh scars, and each new landslide stirs anxiety about what the future holds if the mountains keep crumbling. Here, economic hardship is tangled with a growing sense of fear.

Kandroor market offers another glimpse into this changing landscape. Once alive with travellers and tourists, it now sits in quiet neglect. Vendors lament dwindling sales and long, empty hours. With the four-lane drawing visitors away, buses no longer stop, and the market’s lifeblood has ebbed. Now, owning a private vehicle feels essential, but for many, it is out of reach. Mobility has fractured the community, separating those who can move from those left waiting. In Bilaspur’s main market, the bypass feels like the slow fading of a heartbeat. Shopkeepers speak of empty aisles and vanishing crowds. The town has slipped off the map, no longer a natural stop for anyone passing by. Residents describe a sense of isolation, left behind by a development that promised progress but delivered separation. The real issue is not the road itself, but the absence of any effort to keep Bilaspur connected after the traffic vanished. With fewer people, the old route has grown vulnerable—petty crime and vandalism are on the rise.

What was once a lively gathering place now feels deserted. The town endures, but its purpose has shifted. It is no longer a crossroads, but a place people bypass unless they must return. Across Gobind Sagar Lake, at Mandi-Bhurari Chowk, the story takes a different turn. Here, the four-lane highway has sparked visible growth. Families who gave up land have used compensation to rebuild and expand their homes and open new shops. The area buzzes with development, and tourism—especially boating—has found fresh momentum. For villages once reliant on boats to reach Bilaspur, the new road has unlocked new routes and possibilities.

Yet even this growth is uneven. People speak of land lost to landslides after construction that was never compensated for. Only officially acquired land was counted. Damage caused later remains unacknowledged. Opportunity and risk coexist. Bhurari is becoming the new entry point to Bilaspur, quietly replacing the town’s older centre, but this shift has consequences that are not shared equally. The loss is perhaps most clearly felt along the old highway’s dhabas. Once, the stretch between Swarghat and Bilaspur was lined with roadside food joints, open day and night, feeding travellers and employing hundreds of people. Today, many of them present a gloomy picture, with empty tables and a dilapidated appearance. At Binoul, a family-run dhaba that once cooked over twenty kilograms of dal a day, now prepares only a small fraction of that. With traffic gone, work vanished, and workers relocated to a different location. What remains now are concrete structures without any purpose, built with significant investment and the displacement of livelihoods, showing that the loss is not only economic but also socio-cultural. On the older route, the Dhabas were social spaces where strangers could interact with locals, conversations unfolded, and the road felt alive. Their disappearance and closure mark the end of a shared roadside culture that had grown slowly over generations. The old highway now falls silent early, and that silence carries fear as much as emptiness. For families who remember displacement during the Bhakra Dam, the four-lane feels like history repeating itself. Land was taken once, lives were rebuilt with difficulty, and now the town is pushed aside again.

Figure 3- Built-up structures around the town

What emerges from Bilaspur is not a simple story of development or decline. It is a story of built up structures in the form of modern infrastructure and its differential impact on regions of the Himalayas. Near the four-lane, opportunities grow. Along the older road and within the town, livelihoods shrink, mobility declines, connectivity thins, and everyday life becomes harder. The road moves faster, but only for those passing through. For those who live here, movement has slowed, become costlier, and become more uncertain. The four-lane highway was built to connect the Himalayas more closely to national routes. In doing so, it has also disconnected Bilaspur from the flows that once sustained it. The road did not just change traffic patterns; it changed the way people moved.

It changed how the town is lived, remembered, and imagined. What remains is a place watching vehicles pass at a distance, carrying with them the feeling that development has arrived, but now no one stops or stays. It is thus a classic example of the unintended consequences of built-up, in this instance, the four-lane highway, which has brought disconnection alongside promises of connectivity. The road does not just bypass Bilaspur physically; it brings back memories of being marginal to development decisions. For them, this is not a new story but another chapter in a long experience of loss.

Naveen comes from a small village in East Rajasthan. He is currently in the final year pursuing an M.A. in Development Studies at IIT Mandi, and holds a graduation degree in B.Sc. (Hons) Community Science, an allied agricultural course, from Dr Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Bihar. His academic journey has focused on field research, community engagement, community nutrition, early childhood education and development, assessment of grassroots development schemes and policies.. At present he is working on a CSR project of a social enterprise, The Woolkniteers, as an intern for the livelihood generation of women artisans in Kullu.