Premise:
"These days it is a busy shopping street with big hotels and cinemas, gigantic film billboards featuring actresses in wet saris, and a roadway that is so chock-a-block with cows, rickshaws, pedestrians, and bicycles that cars are often seen going backwards."
Hypothesis: Possibly, it is a busy shopping street with large film advertisements

it is not possible to tell

Premise:
"Hired car. "
Hypothesis: Their own car.

no

Premise:
"Back in '59 this had been a flourishing town, well on its way to prominence in the Southwest."
Hypothesis: It was a prominent and flourishing town in 1959 and has stayed that way ever since.
it is not possible to tell