The first and the foremost is the Dal Lake. No doubt there are a host of other reasons for the deterioration of this water body but tourism too has played a damaging part. This pertains to the hotels on the periphery of the Lake and the house boats inside it. Before the advent of “modern” tourism in Kashmir, Lake was available only for temporary mooring of house boats. There were no permanent house boats inside the Lake. These used to be moored on the river. Similarly, there were no hotels along the Boulevard. It was a nice green walkway. The rush of tourists resulted in uncontrolled growth of accommodation both on the periphery and within the Lake. The untreated sewage from these dwellings has been a major factor in the pollution of the Lake. Now let us take the example of pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Amarnath Ji. In the past this pilgrimage was limited to a fortnight and number of pilgrims would not be more than 20 thousand or so. There was only one traditional route through Pahalgam-Sheshnag. This route and the holy cave had been discovered by Maliks of Pahalgam who till recently used to get a share of the offerings made in the cave. It was simple religious pilgrimage. However, after 1993 when a ban was placed on the pilgrimage by the militant group Harkat-ul-Ansar, the pilgrimage came into prominence. The number of pilgrims increased tremendously. In 1996 there was a terrible disaster on the route due to untimely snow blizzard. Hundreds perished. The government constituted an inquiry committee under Dr. Nitish Sengupta. The committee stipulated that the pilgrimage should be held only for one month and the maximum number of pilgrims should be 5,000 from all routes. Unfortunately, the Shrine Board which was constituted to regulate and monitor the Yatra, completely over turned the recommendations of Dr. Sengupta. Not only has the period of yatra been extended but the number is gone up ten fold or so! This increase in the duration and the number of pilgrims is having an adverse impact on the fragile ecology of this mountain area. There is an urgent need to take an impartial view of the whole situation in the long term interests of the environment of this area. In Uttrakhand, the Yatra to Rishikesh has also been controlled and regulated by the government as the increased number of pilgrims had seriously damaged the local environment. Because of similar reasons even Saudi Arabia controls the number of Hajis every year. It is done both for the safety of the pilgrims and to take care of the environment. Unfortunately sometimes politics plays more part than the religion!

The other area of concern is the constitution of a couple of dozen Tourism Development Authorities. There is no harm in identifying and preparing an inventory of potential tourist places. However, these authorities which are supposed to be opening new areas are destroying the environment of these places. Instead of real planning in a phased manner, the authorities are creating concrete and brick structures in fragile areas. The creation of authorities has been based more on political considerations than actual requirements of sound tourism planning. In fact, depending upon the influx of tourists these areas can be developed in a phased manner to stager the traffic to take care of the environment. Dispersal will also prevent over-development of certain places. However, the overall tourism development has to be an integrated process. In fact, because of the location of these potential resorts in remote areas one has to take care to prevent an economic imbalance. It has been observed that tourism development tends to create 21st century resorts surrounded by people living in middle ages as regards various facilities. It would be better if these new places are developed by integrating the surrounding areas in their development. This can be done by promoting Adventure and Ecotourism. What is ecotourism? The dictionary definition is, "Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people". Tourism should be a means to develop an area and not destroy it for posterity. So one has to be very careful and cautious. Thus the authorities need to keep this definition in view while developing new areas in remote mountains.

Here it may be pointed out that Tourism is not a charitable activity but a viable economic activity which has an international status of an export industry. It earns foreign exchange without exporting anything except goodwill and few souvenirs. Being a service oriented industry it has extensive employment potential. After having highlighted various aspects of tourism in our state, it can be said that this could be one of the priority sectors in the long run. However, the activity has to be developed in a planned manner to improve our basic resource and provide economic sustenance. This can be achieved by first formulating a long term perspective plan and a definite policy for developing the activity. At present both the things are missing in the State Tourism. There has been an exercise going on for sometime for selecting a capable agency for doing the needful. One hopes that this project will be shortly commissioned. After formulating a policy and a perspective plan, it will be essential to implement the same in a phased manner. Usually such plans remain locked up in steel trunks. In order to ensure implementation of the plans and monitor these on the ground, it may be useful to set up an independent monitoring and regulatory agency like a statutory Tourist Board. There are such tourist boards in many developed countries where they not only oversee the tourism development but also actively participate in it. It is a sort of Public-Private partnership without any outside interference. This aspect can be examined in detail and a suitable model adopted for the state. It is essential to de-politicise tourism if we want to really promote it as a viable economic activity and balance it with environment. Unless we do it, we may neither achieve optimum tourism goals nor be able to safeguard our fragile ecology and environment! Short term greed sometimes destroys the long term goals. Of this there are many examples within our state and all over the world. One prays that good sense prevails and we are able to achieve prosperity in a beautiful living environment!

(Concluded)