Pricing in ecology

Expecting only the rich to conform not a sustainable solution

The government’s plans to restrict  tourism in 12 new Lakshadweep Islands to premium tourists to discourage crowds in an ecologically fragile region raise a critical point about tourism management in India. The fact that the tourism ministry is using a pricing strategy to achieve an environmental objective is noteworthy. It suggests that cheap or middle-budget tourists cannot be relied on to conserve the environment, although such tourists account for the bulk of vacationers in India. This goes to the heart of the problem of tourism in India. With our embarrassment of riches — natural, historical and anthropological — tourism has the potential to become one of the country’s biggest growth industries and employment creators. Yet, the growing piles of garbage and squalor around monuments and the wanton defilement of our mountains, rivers and natural heritage by hordes of tourists are destroying the net worth of this asset at a steady pace.

This destruction is partly the consequence of a widening customer base. Indians’ growing prosperity and the expanding air and rail links have all contributed to a booming domestic tourism industry over the years. Domestic tourism has been growing at a steady pace over the past few years — even in 2016, when economic growth slowed, it saw a healthy 13 per cent growth rate, with an astonishing 1.6 billion tourist visits recorded in different states and Union Territories. The upside to this is that many small and medium businesses have flourished to cater to these newly rich travellers.

The downsides are best exemplified in Uttarakhand, a state with an abundance of natural, religious and historical heritage. Tourism, particularly religious tourism (the chardham yatra and the kawariya yatra being annual events), emerged as one of its fastest-growing businesses. The state administration gratefully collected the tourism rupees but did not compensate by putting in place — and more importantly enforcing — rules governing the conduct of tourists and the practices of service providers. Between jerry-built cheap hostelries and ribbons of garbage cascading down the hillsides, it would be no exaggeration to say that one of India’s most beautiful states has been scarred by tourism.

Nothing reflected the irreparable harm of irresponsible tourism than the impact of the flash floods in 2013, when incessant heavy rain caused landslides after dams gave way, trapping thousands and killing many more. Over those days, hundreds of “hotels” built without regard to building laws — tawdry monuments to deep-rooted corruption in the state administration — collapsed, offering some of the most dramatic photos of the crisis. The lessons from the tragedy — especially when added to the relentless dam-building in one of the world’s most ecologically sensitive zones — appeared to have been ignored. Five years later, things are back to square one even as, incredibly, the road ministry seriously considers plans to build roads and rail links cutting through the Himalayan ranges for the benefit of religious tourists.

In Lakshadweep, the ministry has insisted on environment-friendly construction and practices, such as the use of solar power, water-recycling plants, and so on. Why should these norms be restricted to the premium destination? Should the ministry not stipulate that all hostelries of, say, three-star and above mandatorily follow such norms? Although it is true that tourism is a state subject, the central ministry could conceivably incentivise these guidelines for hoteliers. Given the employment and other knock-on benefits that accrue from tourism, such incentives would be as value-accretive as subsidising the earnings of workers in the textiles industry (where India appears to have missed the global bus). Backing this up with periodic awareness campaigns about the benefits of responsible tourism in the print and visual media would help too. In the larger cause of sustainable tourism, expecting only rich people to conform is no solution at all.