India and China have also been underscoring the transformative potential of subregional cooperation in the field of tourism. It is easy to understand why. The subregion presents a postcard collage with its rich fare of festivals, monasteries, temples and churches, verdant tea gardens, mighty rivers, deep forests, diverse ecological zones and diversity of languages, ethnicities and religions. The entire region is being promoted as a tourist destination and marketing is projecting its natural beauty and immensely rich cultural and ethnic diversity (Bhuthalingam 2003). At the initiative of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (MDONER), the North Eastern Council has prepared a comprehensive master plan for tourism to be implemented in the ongoing 12th Five Year Plan (20122017). A threeday International Travel Mart (ITM) showcasing the Northeast and West Bengal as a tourist destination was held in Guwahati in January 2013. The Tourism Minister K. Chiranjeevi underlined the importance of the event as the firstever international tourism event to be organised with an exclusive focus on the Northeast. The region is beginning to attract the growing international attention of investors, tour operators and service industry as seen from the participation of 23 countries at the event (Bangkok Post 2013).

But whatever the glossy brochures may proclaim, the numbers tell a story of their own. While India is setting its sights on attracting 1 per cent of the total world tourist arrivals by 2017, China is aiming to become the world’s leading tourist destination by 2020. While China received 55 million tourists in 2010, foreign tourist arrivals in India stood at 5.5 million (UNWTO 2011: 7). Regrettably, many good initiatives have also not been accompanied by any significant relaxation in customs and immigration facilitation at the border. A case in this regard is that of the Maitree Express, the only train link from Kolkata to Dhaka that was inaugurated with much fanfare in 2008. Cumbersome security checks and lengthy customs and immigration formalities at border stations such as Darshana in Bangladesh and Gede in West Bengal and the requirement of disembarking at both border points have made the train service highly unpopular. In contrast, bus services between India and Bangladesh have been operating with relatively fewer security hurdles.

There exists good potential to connect Northeast India and Southwest China to the wellestablished tourism networks of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian and East Asian countries have all been aggressively marketing themselves as tourist destinations, and across the region, tourism has been a big revenue earner. The Greater Mekong Subregion represents an example of a successful transnational tourism regime, with tourism being one of the major growth engines among the 11 flagship programmes of regional cooperation. There are also efforts to promote the GMS as a single destination and move towards the harmonisation of regulations and procedures. The six member countries have agreed in principle to move towards a GMS visa that would be akin to the European Union’s Schengen visa to facilitate travel from outside the region. The Mekong Tourism Development Project has been so designed for the joint marketing of tour programmes in the region. An example is the Heritage Necklace Circuit that links the six heritage sites of Siem Reap in Cambodia, Hue in Vietnam, Luang Prabang in Laos, Bagan in Myanmar, Sukhothai in Thailand and Lijiang in Yunnan, China.

A map from the book detailing new development projects.

There are also moves to institutionalise crossborder cooperation in marketing, transit, research, training and a variety of imaginatively conceived package tour programmes. Such an integrated approach can be extended to cover the entire region including India, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. An interesting initiative that India and countries in the region could join is the Tourism Earth Lung Initiative by Sri Lanka in 2007. The initiative aims to make the country a carbonneutral destination by 2018 and plans to put in place a research and development programme to engage all stakeholders in the public and private sectors, communities, NGOs, tourists, the research community as well as liaise with the forestry, environment and energy departments. Similarly, the Buddhist circuit special train that was launched by the Indian Railways in 2007 connects major Buddhist pilgrim centres in India and Nepal such as Bodh Gaya, Nalanda, Rajgir, Varanasi, Shravasti and Lumbini. A campaign ‘Come to India: Walk with the Buddha’ was also launched in several Southeast Asian countries to promote tourism to Buddhist heritage sites across India.

The real challenge for India and China will be to design pro-poor policies to make tourism inclusive and sustainable. The promotion of a model of mass tourism has undoubtedly seen a massive expansion of tourism revenues and footfalls. But the fixation with the economic potential of tourism has meant that this growth has often sidestepped the lives of local communities, bringing few economic opportunities in its wake. Resource interventions that do not respect the supply potential of mountain ecologies are creating and reinforcing interlocking webs of environmental and socio-economic vulnerability. Growing resource imbalances are directly and adversely impacting on the livelihood options of mountain communities.

A viable alternative model could be the concept of integrated rural tourism, which seeks to nest tourism within community concerns by nurturing the synergies between social, cultural, economic and environmental resources. These can also creatively alleviate the otherwise enormous pressure on local infrastructure during peak summer seasons. Planned well, rural home stays can be designed in winter months so as to not disrupt rural agricultural calendars as well as also provide additional income generating activities (Sikkim Now 2009). Community based tourism also has the potential of bringing tourism generated revenues directly to the rural communities with the potential for diversifying and restructuring mountain economies. There are interesting community based tourism projects elsewhere that are beginning to redress these deficits and looking into questions of income generation, safety, crime and drug trafficking. These underline the critical need for ‘situated development’ that responds to local particularities (Bartholo et al. 2008; Saxena et al. 2007). If handled well, such an approach can also mark a shift from the obsessive focus on expansion of infrastructure that characterises mainstream mass tourism.

It is only when tourism as a sector begins to address such questions that it can create enabling spaces for communities to partake of these opportunities as well as benefits. For instance, community based tourism is allowing hill tribes in northern Thailand such as the Lahus and the Karens in the villages of Ja Bor, Mae Klan Luang and Pha Mon find their place under the sun (Pattullo 2008). Another successful case in point is the initiative in southern Africa called the Management Oriented Monitoring Systems (MOMS), which has seen active community participation from designing, monitoring, undertaking data collection as well as maintaining records (Diggle 2006). The model is aimed at restoring the symbiotic balance between communities, protected areas and tourism development, with tourism revenues being channelised back to the community and their environs. Similarly, the Addo Elephant National Park in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, designed as a pro-poor strategy, is another example of a multi-stakeholder engagement between a range of actors related to the tourism experience. The involvement of the government, private tour operators, NGOs and local communities has seen community tourism projects such as drama troupes, arts and crafts groups being creatively packaged and inserted into tour programmes (Roe and Khanya 2001). Similarly, the model developed by Prainha do Canto Verde in Brazil has seen the local community take the lead in a range of activities, from drawing out tourism plans to administering it themselves. What is also fascinating in these examples is that tourism promotion is woven into a range of activities germane to the residents such as health, education, fishing and the environment, thereby creating a symbiotic interface. Sustainable tourism will thus call for learning alliances among all key stakeholders such as park agencies working in consultation with local communities, the tourism sector, researchers and NGOs.

Excerpted with permission from
India-China Borderlands: Conversations beyond the Centre
By Nimmi Kurian
SAGE Publications, India
ISBN 978-8132113515
175pp.