Seventy years on, Himachal’s progress suffers due to mixed-up political priorities. Himachal Pradesh, which came into being on 15 April, 1948 with the merger of 30 princely states and later got full statehood on 25 January, 1971, has given equitable access to people in education, health, social security and even road connectivity to an extent with the passage of time and has won accolades in some sectors at national level for that.

What is disturbing, however, is that, barring few exceptions, the political system in HP over decades has evidently worked to oblige individuals with votes in mind than to have a long-term vision for development of state to keep pace with time.

The bureaucracy too has been with politicians in progressing this tendency for personal gains at the cost of public interest. The state has a population of over 70 lakh and has a debt of around Rs 46,000 Crore.

The graph of unemployed (over 8 lakh) and underemployed persons in Himachal is ever rising. The state government, the biggest employer in HP, has not been able to fill large number of vacancies for many years now due to financial crunch.

What has created more stagnation is that Himachalis by nature are not keen on getting petty jobs in industry in the state and they keep waiting for government jobs. Although many youngsters are now leaving the state for greener pastures.

The successive governments have been forced to take loans to repay earlier ones, with limited thinking on mobilisation of resources.

So far, the policymakers in this beautiful, peaceful but fragile hill state, which naturally offers much for tourism, have not been able to decide on which way to progress and prioritise for income.

While experts say HP could have easily cashed in on tourism to generate employment opportunities and revenue in long term, the successive governments have not focussed on it beyond proposals.

The state lags behind in air and rail connectivity, the roads are very bad and HP does not offer special link-up packages to tourists keen on visiting different destinations in one trip.

The tourists do come to HP in great numbers on their own first time, enchanted by its beauty, but most of them go back disappointed when they see the ground scenario of lack of facility and comfort.

Most tourists complain that the state in general lacks attitude for tourism and that’s why it wasn’t able to cash in on the fall in tourism in neighbouring Jammu and Kashmir. Worse off, HP is caught in the web of conflicting policies with lop sided implementation over the years.

The kind of industrial growth HP has seen over the years has interfered with tourism, and the state’s agenda to exploit hydropower without taking required safeguards has led to environmental degradation over last decades.