Shopping mall as everyone knows is a closed arena with shops of all kind from clothing, food court, gaming zones, gadgets, parlours and anything you could name is under one roof. It’s both a recreation place and shopping hub.
People living in big cities on a relaxing Sunday might head to a shopping mall. But people living in a beautiful city like Nainital are present in a place better than a shopping mall 24*7. The lush valleys, the soft wind murmuring past your ears, and the mild sunshine. Even leading shopping malls who would spend a bazillion on their infrastructure will not have such a pleasant atmosphere even close to this.
Every metropolitan today has an array of shopping malls and complexes with different facilities. In hot and humid places like Mumbai and crowded cities like Delhi, shopping can be a cumbersome task and they have no natural beauty spots left due to immense urbanisation, so they need such places.
But what is the point of again getting in a mall when you are living in a city likes Nainital, with fresh air and beautiful natural surroundings.
Nainital is a landlocked city where construction has been at a halt for past 35 years now fearing the natural calamities like a land slide. It is strictly prohibited to construct any huge building in the city. It is done for security reasons. And violating or trespass the law is the most self- harming thing one would try to initiate.
It will be a complete catastrophe during the days of construction which would last for about a year or more being a hilly terrain. The transportation will be very difficult and that would further lengthen the process and meanwhile the people will be harmed further.
Construction leads to increase in chances of land slide so it is necessary to stop it. Also construction is the ultimate cause of loss of forest cover, displacing the natural fauna of the place and ultimately conversion into a brick sand barren land.
It might appear that this way Nainital will lag behind in infrastructural progress but who needs a progress like that which robs the place of a its actual wealth. Constructing any mall always harms the local traders and the conventional practices of the place. For the local people the existing shops are more than enough and they are used to the treks they unknowingly go for while shopping. All their trades and sources of income are based on the natural conventional resources.
The cities today are dealing with problems like shortage of land and pollution all due to unlimited construction programs they had carried out earlier.
A city’s actual progress in based on parameters like the literacy percentage, the gender ratio, treatment of women, the natural wealth of the area, the quality of air and other natural resources and the peace and harmony that prevails in the city. In these criteria’s Nainital tops the list and doesn’t need any mall or tall buildings.