There is always so much of rhetoric on tourism emanating from the Secretariat but things have on the ground remain unchanged. Whatever has happened is due to private initiative. Tourism is not just about building infrastructure. That’s just one part of the package. Tourism requires holistic planning which includes transportation, accommodation, a well-laid out tourism road map to tell the tourist where to go and how to reach the place. Several trained tourist guides with the gift of narration to sell the destinations are urgently needed. Hence human resource is important. So too the people who own the resources! All the waterfalls, caves, forests, monoliths and heritage sites are community owned. But communities live so close to these assets that they have not realized their live amidst rare treasures. Unless people learn to identify the potentials of the scenic beauty around them they will not know how to leverage those. Hence it is important to make all plans for tourism promotion with the people rather than for them. People have to be willing participants in the business of inviting tourists to their villages. They must decide how much carbon footprints they and their surroundings can take on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. You cannot have busloads of tourists descend on sleepy villages and destroying their peace. This has already happened in some of the tourist destinations of Meghalaya.
Tourism in Meghalaya has so far been planned at the secretariat or in hotels where city dwellers with the potential to invest have been invited, as if they are the only important stakeholders. The manner in which government runs its tourism business is not even a model you would want to replicate. Look at Hotel Crowborough which remains incomplete or Orchid Lake Resort where service is almost non-existent. Yet the same government continues to plan in isolation without taking the most important partners – the villagers whose sights and sounds will be used to showcase the tourism potentials of Meghalaya. The common logic in the government is that villagers have no wisdom to do anything for themselves. Hence grandiose schemes are conceived by babus who have not visited the nooks and corners of the State to understand the cultural nuances.
Instead of undertaking foreign trips and visiting tourism marts around the world the babus must get out of the Secretariat and visit the tourism sites of Meghalaya. Not much has been learnt or imbibed from the foreign jaunts. So they might as well learn something from their backyards.