SHILLONG: “Meghalaya does not benefit much from the kind of tourists it attracts currently. Many of these tourists stay at Guwahati, eat at Guwahati, book a car from there and come for a day trip to Shillong and return by evening. They spend a minimum amount here,” said newly elected MP Conrad Sangma while speaking at the international conference on Climate Change: Adaptation and Mitigation organized jointly by Synod College and University of Technology and Management (UTM) here on Monday.
Sangma said Meghalaya has to plan its tourism along the lines of Bhutan. “The state cannot deal with mass tourism which tends to generate too much of carbon footprints by way of plastic and other wastes. The State needs to brand itself as a niche destination. For this to happen the Government needs to adopt a more professional approach towards tourism promotion and management,” Sangma stated.
Dwelling on the issue of Climate Change, Sangma said individual responsibility and individual consumption habits would determine the sustainability of this planet. He remarked that there is still a lot of ignorance even on energy conservation which is crucial to sustaining a green planet and said that he is troubled by the fact that on entering a village he would find the conventional light bulbs which use more energy being lighted throughout the day and night. “It is time for Meghalaya to switch to CFL and LED bulbs and for the State Government to hike up taxes on conventional bulbs,” the MP said. “As policy makers we have to set the agenda for public action,” Sangma added
Conrad Sangma who at one time was also the Power Minister said he used to be concerned with the power consumption at the State Secretariat and had suggested that the entire secretariat be solar lighted. The power saved on Saturdays and Sundays could go into a grid to light up the homes of somebody, somewhere, he said.
“The challenge for policy makers is to develop technology that is affordable. In this aspect, the generation of solar energy needs to be affordable for the common citizens to adopt. Ultimately the challenge is to decide what consumption patterns are sustainable. Even the building materials we use should be those that are most adaptable to our environment,” Sangma mentioned.
Reiterating the need to promote niche tourism, Conrad Sangma said one lakh tourists a year who spend even ten thousand rupees each is a better proposition than having five lakh tourists whose only investments are on packaged food products costing less than one hundred rupees.
Incidentally, Lionel Nongkhlaw, Secretary of the San Shnong Youth Welfare Organisation (SSYWO) has echoed these similar concerns while speaking to this correspondent on Saturday last.
Nongkhlaw had pointed out that Meghalaya must adopt some of the best practices of Sikkim which does not allow cars from West Bengal to enter the State. In a similar manner, cars bringing tourists from Assam or elsewhere need to drop their passengers at an entry point to Shillong from where local taxis can take the tourists on sight-seeing trips. This he said would ensure that everyone benefits from tourism.
Later at parallel sessions papers were presented by scholars and scientists from Bangladesh, Pakistan and South East Asian countries. A paper presented by Subrata Purkayastha from Geography Dept NEHU, titled, “Eco-cultural tourism and sustainable development – a case study of Meghalaya,” found that the number of foreign tourists visiting Meghalaya had dwindled considerably, leading to a sharp decline in dollar earnings in the tourism sector.
