The Janus Perspective

Point Blank

By Hugh & Colleen Gantzer

Minister Renuka Chowdhury must develop the Janus Perspective. The Roman god of good beginnings looked both back into the past and forward into the future. She’ll also have to look sideways at the Ministries of Finance, Home, Civil Aviation, Culture, and Environment and Forests; and at the state governments’ incarnations of these ministries. They have all become stake holders in tourism, and they all want to use tourism to suit themselves. According to the articles on the Minister, in recent issues of the Express Hoteliers and Caterer and Travel and Tourism, the industry seems to feel that a Minister of State will not be able to juggle all these conflicting interests successfully.

We disagree. The compulsions of realpolitik are in her favour. Ms. Chowdhury is not just a Minister of State, she’s a UPA Minister of State; and the UPA is a menage a trois of the Congress and the Marxists; and also an amalgam of political entities who will be too involved in sharing the spoils of ‘lucrative’ ministries to bother with the complexities of tourism sans aviation and culture.

Let’s take the Marxists first because they are the ones the industry fears most. The classic Marxist thrust was to create more feather-bedded jobs for more of the, so-called, ‘under-privileged’. But this traditional pattern no longer works in Russia or China; it’s been virtually abandoned in Kerala, hence the tourism successes of ‘God’s Own Country’; and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is trying, with great difficulty, to extricate himself out of the sticky morass of Marxist shibboleths in West Bengal.

Consequently, though up-market tourism facilites will not be plagued by crippling strikes they will also not be given any sops to attract their rich and famous clients. There will be token attempts to promote rural, farms and village tourism which will, eventually, be cornered by the rich of those areas because only they will be able to provide the expected levels of service and infrastructure. Eventually, the Marxists will retreat from such ‘Grassroots Tourism’ and accept the virtues of “People’s Tourism”.

The Congress has a long, if unrecognised, history of such tourism. The Maruti, the five day week and the easing of travel restrictions on LTCs. launched the great domestic tourism boom. The Festivals of India established an international image of India as a land of great cultural diversity and laid the groundwork for the Incredible India campaign. Rajiv Gandhi also started the computer webbing of India and Sam Pitroda, on his invitation, set up the remarkable STd network both of which threw bridges between the remotest part of India and the world. Travellers no longer felt cut off from their homes while discovering the wonders of our land. And, finally, Congress Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Madhav Rao Scindia introduced Air taxi services which opened Indian skies to private airlines.

These, then, are the achievements that Renuka Chowdhury has to live up to, and exceed. She has rightly said that she must start with the great pilgrim movements of our land. This is a virtually untapped tourism resource. If pilgrims of all faiths get the sort of facilities that Jugmohan gave them in Vaishno Devi, they will use them, pay for them, and lay a golden trail of development along their path.

Our natural and cultural heritage is also another untapped resource that needs attention. Here, however, she has to exercise great sensitivity. a dance festival against the backdrop of the temples of Khajuraho, which are now secular archaeological monuments, is acceptable. A candle-lit dinner in front of a tomb is offensive. We would be very incensed if someone said “you have such a beautiful cemetery. Can we hire it for a quiet cocktail party?” The Congress, unlike the BJP and the Marxists, also has a long history of enviornmental activism. All the major eco-protection acts were made by Congress governments. It was a Congress government that stopped the proposed destruction of Kerala’s Silent Valley, when we brought it to their attention. Mrs. Indira Gandhi initiated the CRZ rules to protect our beaches from destructive exploitation, and she set up the Eco-task Force to green the slopes around our hill-station after they had been scarred by insensitive quarrying. Ms Chowdhury is likely to face her greatest challenges in resisting the blandishments of unscrupulous ‘developers’ vandalising our environment on the pretext of tourism development. In particular, she must turn her immediate attention to developments in West Bengal. The state government seems to be acting in unseemly haste in encouraging the creation of a major tourist resort in the ecologically fragile Sunderbans. Will this grandiose scheme protect the environment? Will it serve the common people who elected the UPA? And, finally, will it stand the acid test of probity?

It would be interesting to see how the new Minister responds to this, her first major challenge.