Hi Amit and Ajay, I was born in Shimla in the early 70s. My dad was in the IFS (long retired now). I lived in Shimla and Kullu during my childhood and early teens and have been in Cabada for the last 18 years. I go back to India every year and it breaks my heart to see all these places withering away under the assault of mindless tourism, we have done most places to death under the garb of "Encouraging Tourism". In contrast 30 million (there has been a dip in the numbers post COVID) tourists visit Canada each year and the places of interest still look as pristine as they were 18 years ago (at least the ones I visit frequently). It is a mix of political will, resources and an enlightened citizenry that is aware that they have to leave these places intact for the future generations. I have a couple of my batch mates in IAS (Himachal cadre) and I discuss some of these topics everytime I meet them but it seems the establishment is far too engrossed in implementing diktats of the political masters for "development" of the state and dont have time for these nuanced arguments for sustainable development. Ajay is bang on regarding low value tourists visiting Dharamshala, thanks to the cricket ground, infact the same arguement holds true for the rest of the state for different reasons. We in the hill states are paying the price by increased temperatures, abnormal rainfall, depleting forests, and, of course, callous citizenry for the most part. Thanks for visiting Himachal and raising these very pertinent issues.
Genuine question, aren’t the IAS trained and selected for precisely this expertise? The politicians role is to push dikats, the IAS cadre (and everyone and their grand mother) knows tourism development is a thing, and it is coming. What’s the gap here between “let’s push for developing tourism” and “sustainable development”? I don’t understand why the diktat is being blamed here. This is a genuine question, because everybody knows development is coming and you have to be prepared for it, esp if your job is in the administrative service. What am I missing here?
The politicians have the ultimate power. They are elected by the people to rule. IAS officers are servants of politicians who have to execute whatever is asked of them. We can't blame executives when they only have the power to enforce what their owners tell them whether it is in government or in corporate world. Managers/executives are servants who work for the shareholders of the company or the politicians. If the politicians want, they can change the whole system, but they don't they are continuing to rule India like the British with a system created by the British. The White elites got replaced by the brown elites, but the people below them are the same. The chief minister don't want to give power to mayors or Sarpanch, instead they rule directly with the help of civil servants. This means that local issues like sanitation, clean water, garbage management, sewage, roads are bad in India. Because the CM don't have to bandwidth to focus on every small thing in every village, town and city. He/She can only focus on big ticket projects and that's what they do. So we get expressways and metro trains but our local roads are not drivable and cities get submerged in rains. In India local governments spend 3% of the total budget. In China and USA local governments spend more than 50% of the total national budget. The system here is so centralized that basic services are not provided and India cities look post-apocalyptic. The union government has 58 ministries for all kinds of non sensical things while in USA there are only 15 federal ministries. Union government in India should better focus on national security, energy security and foreign policy rather than textile ministry.
Wish they applied these principles in places like Goa as well. So much scope for improving quality of tourism and experience there with a population that’s also educated and willing (I hope) to apply these principles.
You guys are one of the best things that happened to me in the past few years. But what puzzles me the most is.. Apologies Ajay if I sound rude. If Ajay was "within the system" for so many years, why has he not delivered one mega change from one of these ideas? Or maybe people like me, whom I call "Indians in CST fast local", are not aware of that Big transformation success. What prevents brilliant minds from achieving giant transformations in India. Why rate of change is so slow in India? All this talk totally skips politician's perspective. Some real examples from a politician's perspective may help answer that question.
I love south France- the Provence- a must visit if you want to study how to keep a place beautiful and welcome tourists- even in the wilderness, the roadsides are clean, trees pruned, lakes and waterbodies are preserved and so is the agricultural land-its a treat to see lavender fields and vineyards for miles n miles... the local folks are super-polite and have civic-sense - they don't throw garbage on the streets; cattle n dogs are not allowed to roam the streets- one has to follow architectural norms in terms of the style of building and the colour-scheme of the buildings. yes, there are many sound-systems too having weekend parties in the forests- but even there the organisers put garbage bins n porta-toilets: all thrash is carried away post the event...can we do this in India? I doubt it.
Yes india can develop 2/3vallies in Himachal 1/2 in jammu one in Sikkim 2/3in arunachal and at least two in Utrakhand but each valley need s billions of dollars to develop bharat in wadio ko medical tourism for foreign tourists or indian tourist ko Eco-turism ke tor par istemaal kar sakta hai jisme ek state dusre ke sath land exchange karke intra regional tourism ka vikash kar sakte hain jis se bhashai bhinnta ko beat karne me bhi sehyog milega or Rashtriya bhavna ka vikash hoga
Hi Everything is Everything Team! I absolutely loved the episode. The concept of the 'high value tourist' as a framework is thought-provoking and has certainly stuck with me. However, I wonder if there might be a concern for inclusivity with this approach. Shouldn't the goal of a hill state's tourism policy be to balance environmental concerns with market access for all kinds of tourists? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the concept here. I'd ideally like to see sustainability integrated into all tourism product segments. Leisure and the pursuit of the intellectual growth that comes from tourism ought to be a right for all. Would love a secondary deep dive on this issue! Perhaps consider constructive Bir as a case study? Cheers.
Agree with the description completely, but couldn't completely agree with the prescription as of now. I need to read more deeply to understand the subject. One question remains, if the focus is on development of local population, is there no place for low value (budget) tourism?
I found that you've talked at length about the government and community, but missed talking in depth about another set of important players: the tourists. The tourists have been just categorized into high value and low value, and even in this categorization, the definition of "value" is not very clear. As far as I can gauge your sense of aesthetics, it could not be just economic value. Maybe it needs an episode of its own. Apart from cultivating the governance, and town planning, we must also look at inculcating a culture among the tourists. We need to drill into the heads of our populace fundamental sense that littering is not a "choti moti baat". And as simple as it sounds, this is a herculean task. We're talking about a cultural rewiring, and just tweaking the incentives might not help, it needs serious philosophical thinking and execution at every level - schools, media, internet. And just sharing a thought, might or might not be related, I had earlier about the Indian mindset, that we live by the maxim "arey chalta hai". However, when this attitude is combined with laws of large numbers, we see avoidable disasters happening in India almost on a daily basis. The filthy tourist destination, led by religious destinations, also reeks of this disastrous marriage. - A fan
I think this is the 1st time we are moving away from individual rights and freedom to the space of state regulation and coercion in everything is everything. I understand the negative externalities concept being inserted here, but the nuances haven't been conveyed in its entirety I feel. Dont you feel even the European cities got spoilt before becoming clean. In the same way our hills might become cleaner and better. Private actions are coordinated and I feel this a phase where individuals for their needs are making the most rational choice. If we are okay with Governments taking regulatory stance for protecting the Himalayas and Bir in this case then we should be okay with Delhi government implementing coercive and confused pollution control policies. Low value and High Value comes from our stand point of current state in life. Maybe in India market now caters to low value tourists in higher numbers than high value tourists in extremely low numbers. Maybe the uncoordinated private people have it better figured out than us. In the words of Friedrich Hayek - "If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them." Here the need for state to control negative externalities is absolutely essential which I agree upon. But it is a thin line to be walking off completely destroying local economy by beleiving that the state will come up with the perfect policy for Himalayan tourism. Im more prepared to beleive in the locals to decide on what is required there whether "high value" or "low value" as only they will know the true economies of scale there. So I would like to think Im in the dark, but a strong democratic local Bir Government with enhanced lobbying capabilities of local businesses can come up with better decision on this. A super nice episode with lots of food for thought. @amit @ajay - Parting couple of questions 1. Why is it that we are recommending state policy to deal with negative externalities in tourism when we could see that they have been unable to efficiently deal with the same on other negative externalities in the plains? 2. Also I understand western thinking and development is the gold standard for human civilization across various spectrums but are we limiting ourselves to believe that high productivity economy cannot exist there just because current situations doesnt allow us to imagine? Why cant we imagine of a future transportation system which make it possible for high productivity to happen in those places? Isnt tourism model archaic and are we being intellectually lazy to not think of other models of growth for these Himalayan and exotic locales?
Town planning. It is state heavy. It can be made less state heavy. Bimal Patel emphasises you just need to define the grid of streets and parks and lock away 40% of the land. Not Indian style town planning which designs for schools and hospitals and other details. Urban public health and urban infrastructure, these are state heavy. There is no way out. And in all this, of course, we need wise and sane measures, not stupid things.
😊In the end, it's.. keep out the vulgar low intrinsic value plebeians and instead let's welcome all high value tourists/visitors. Are you guys aware how long it took for Switzerland, Colorado and other such joints to get where they are today ? Also, the India that's capable of pulling this off is hardly a decade old, give them some time. Ajay, truckloads of airports are definitely coming up in those places, but priorities lie elsewhere for now... patience. Interesting discussion though.
