Ever because the tourism boom in India, local environmentalist groups are clamouring concerning the threat that a rapidly expanding tourist industry poses to the country’s heritage and environment.
The Bane
This begs the query, who’s harming the country’s heritage and environment in point of fact, the locals or the tourists?
Is it the tourists who’re pilfering the country’s heritage and making a mockery of environmental regulations? Or should we actually credit it to our own insensitive residents and officials, who don’t give a hoot concerning the heritage or the environment – if it means they will make a couple of extra bucks!
Tourists move around, explore, shop, after which return; they do not poach, deforest, pollute the rivers, misuse the land, or flout the environmental regulations of the country – they really have more entertaining things to do with their limited time in a foreign land!
Rarely, does a tourist deface a heritage structure, it’s always the local majnoos graffiti ‘Raju loves Meena’ that’s seen on the structures, and never ‘Jim loves Jenny’.
The Boon
Fact 1: Tourism is India’s largest industry; it brings in 15% of foreign exchange income; employs 9% of our population; significantly contributes to the GDP – as reported by several surveys – in brief it is a boon for India.
Fact 2: Tourism offers global exposure; fresh perspectives and latest trade avenues.
Fact 3: Revolutionary tourism practices enforced by the World Travel & Tourism Council and other such institutions are promoting geo and eco tourism practices that encourage respect for other cultures and environmental diversities. All that’s left for us to do is to make sure that we ourselves and our officials respect and follow these practices.
India – Incredible India
India is a land of many cultures and tourism has increased the appreciation and understanding of the cultural melting pot of: passions, colors and spices that make India unique. Tourism actually, creates a bridge of tolerance and acceptance amongst varied: races, ethnicities, nationalities and faiths, which promotes peace and prosperity – and never the destruction of ecology.
As an important man once said “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness and lots of of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, healthful, charitable views of men and things can’t be acquired by vegetating in a single little corner of the earth all one’s life time.”
