The video posted on social media by a gentleman from Karnataka showing a huge, rowdy crowd at Nongriat where the famed double decker living root bridges once provided wondrous delight, has gone viral and should push the Tourism Department to rethink the manner in which it is selling destinations online and through its portals. The living root bridges stand testimony to the scientific wisdom of the Khasis who wove bridges out of the aerial roots of the Ficus Elastica plant commonly called the rubber plant. It was a dire need to create bridges across rivers hundreds of years ago when the concept of a government was yet unknown. There are hundreds of such root bridges across Khasi and Jaintia hills of Meghalaya. If all of those are invaded by mass tourism then the work of the ancestors dating over hundreds of years would be destroyed by humans trampling over them. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has taken cognisance of the existence of such bridges in Mawkyrnot and is assisting the village communities to continue to repair the living root bridges with new aerial roots and to strengthen them with bamboos. The Meghalaya Living Root Bridge Foundation has done much to create awareness among the villagers to exercise caution while selling such destinations. But it cannot be denied that greed has trumped sustainable tourism.
Those who have seen the video will certainly not want to visit Nongriat. More so if they are high end tourists with a fascination for eco-tourism and the mystical silence that surrounds such destinations. Nongriat has become a victim of over-tourism. The only definition of overtourism is when any destination has more footfalls than it can handle and the place is then quickly shunned by those who value quality eco-tourism destinations. Sadly, the communities surrounding the double decker bridges at Nongriat including the Dorbar Shnong are in denial about this negative fall-out. Their take is that tourism should continue to grow without limits because it has become a livelihood. This debate between mass and niche tourism has not even started yet because of the sudden tourism boom. However, those who understand tourism are saying that the manner in which tourism is managed in Meghalaya is no longer sustainable and more people are visiting Arunachal Pradesh instead. This is not good news for Meghalaya where home-stays have sprung up like mushrooms.
The absence of an over-all monitoring and regulatory authority that is non-government but run responsibly only adds to the confusion. The Meghalaya Tourism Development Forum (MTDF) comprising tour operators should have awakened to this disaster in the making. The Government -sponsored, Rural Tourism Development Society also does not seem to have a handle on the trajectory in which tourism is headed in Meghalaya. What’s the point of having such bodies if they cannot carry out the tasks assigned, which in the main is to make tourism a sustainable venture in Meghalaya? The Nongriat scenes call for urgent public debate since no one owns the environment. It is a shared legacy and all should have a voice in this debate.
