By Patricia Mukhim
On Sunday last a very upset young man called me to complain that Laitlum is closed to visitors. Perhaps the only fault of the custodians of that tourist spot is that they did not think it important to inform the public of this decision. Considering it my duty to find out from the horses’ mouth as to the reason/reasons for this sudden verdict, I travelled to Laitlum and spoke to a few people there. Their contention is that (a) there are too many footfalls every weekday and more so on weekends. They feel that their young girls who need to cross the place while going to church are not free from cat-calls and unwanted attention. One person said the people of Laitlum, barring a few, gain nothing from the tourism there. The Shnong which runs the place collects Rs 50 per vehicle but collects no entry fee from the visitors. Hence the yield is nominal even while the villagers have to clean up all the mess left behind by tourists. Also, the new culture of carrying boom boxes everywhere and to make noise with loud music is very disturbing for a sleepy village and for other tourists who come to Laitlum for relaxation and peace of mind.
What is observed over time is that villages that have discovered the value of their ecology and are making it a selling point, don’t actually know how to develop a full-proof plan for a sustainable tourism economy that does no harm to the environment and which also does not assault the sensibilities of the local people. They quickly advertise their sights and sounds over social media and soon there is a rush and then it’s too late for them to impose the do’s and don’ts that tourists should observe. Its almost like selling a half- baked cake. It does harm to the person who consumes it and hurts the business of the person making the cake. Every village that promotes tourism should necessarily have to go through a series of training and awareness about what it takes to run a destination. And it’s the bounden duty of the State Tourism Department to impart that training and business model.
There is something very wrong with the Indian tourist. They think they own every place they visit and except for a very few eco-sensitive tourists, the rest have no curiosity to learn about the local culture. Since they believe they own every place they visit they also feel they have the right to leave behind the garbage they bring along in the form of packaged food items, silver foil, plastic packages, water bottles and of course the liquor bottles that are left behind and oftentimes broken to smithereens as if they are angry with the bottle for running out of liquor. This is not what the ‘real’ tourist would do.
So who is a real tourist? There are many academic definitions that answer this question but I will refrain from citing academics because those descriptions are far too convoluted. In simple terms a tourist is one who travels outside his place of residence to visit a place in his own state or another state or country that he had not visited in the past or revisits it because of a relationship he has developed with the place. In the past only people with disposable incomes actually visited places and stayed there for a considerable period of time. There are German tourists (retired types) for instance, who spend as many as six months in India and spend their summers in Kashmir and winters in Goa. These are hard-core tourists who make their plans well in advance and know why they are spending time in the places they choose to visit. They want value for money and they get it so they revisit every year.
Today we have a different breed of tourists who perhaps just want to get away from the madding crowd in their immediate surroundings and take off in their vehicles to visit places known for their natural beauty so they can flaunt the pictures on their social media handles. Whether such visitors actually have the time or inclination to savour the beauty of the places they visit is questionable. For instance, when visiting the Arwah cave one saw a whole bunch of visitors more interested in photographs than in exploring the caves and asking questions about how the caves were formed etc. Such day tourists as we call them (since their base in somewhere outside Meghalaya and they only come here for a day), don’t really come to learn anything and nor are they interested in the local culture. They are not adventurous enough to try out the local cuisine. Some of them turn up their noses at the smell that emanate from the little food stalls run by the local Kongs selling jadoh with doh khleh, and other tit-bits which are delicacies for us but not so for the tourist who is already prejudiced about the kind of food that tribals eat. Hence, we have so-called “vegetarian” restaurants boldly displayed and “Dhabas” run by the locals. Granted that business demands that they cater to the needs of the fastidious tourists but is there need to pander to tourist palettes and give the cultural cuisine a wide berth? Do tourists have such choices abroad? Do they get vegetarian food in South East Asia unless they really search out places run by Indians? The Indian tourist is the most non-adventurous when it comes to food. He looks for almost the same cuisine he gets at home albeit with more spices and embellishments.
All the above being said, the point that needs to be made is that every tourist destination has to come up with a brochure whose cost is added to the entry fee. The brochure should give a brief explainer about the place and what its USP is and above all the do’s and don’ts. Every entry point should take note of how much plastic articles/packages are carried by each tourist and all those have to be accounted and paid for at the entry point. On leaving the place if the tourist has brought back all the plastic/non-biodegradable materials they carried in, then they get back their deposit , else they have to pay for what they left behind. For this some trained youth who can keep count in a register are needed. This too is a form of employment and they can be paid from the entry fees collected on a daily basis. This requires proper accounting procedures which we don’t see in many of the tourist destinations.
It is because tourism in Meghalaya is so haphazard that we also attract the worst kind of tourists who would not be welcome anywhere else. Try visiting Hampi in Karnakata to see how strict the entry point to the place is. It’s a strictly “No Plastic Zone” and they mean it. If Laitlum has promoted tourism for several years now the question to ask is (a) who has benefitted from it? (b) how many families is tourism supporting? (c) are there any schools or poor children that have benefitted from the spin-offs received from the large number of visitors? If tourism is only going to benefit a few families or people while the pangs of this trade such as the noise, garbage, drunken brawls etc., are suffered by everyone is it really worth promoting? The local people will themselves become enemies of tourists in the end.
Before we come to such a dystopian phase in our tourism history it is important for the State Government to regulate and set down the terms which must be strictly followed by tour promoters, destination owners/stakeholders and tourists before opening up any place to tourism. A free for all tourism experience is strangulating the very idea of tourism which is linked to leisure, nature, ecology, culture and beauty which create the “aha” moment. While the State Government seems to have given a free hand to tour promoters, some amount of government control and regulation is imperative before Meghalaya turns into a hellish experience for the local people.
Here one is not only looking at tourists from outside the state but those within the state as well who love to carry their noise, their plastics and their liquor bottles wherever they travel and to leave behind garbage in an otherwise pristine site. As of date anyone from Shillong who travels to Jaintia Hills or West Khasi hills on a leisure trip is a tourist. Each one must learn and imbibe the rules of tourism.