On, OoruLabs, India's premier urban issues podcast,

The idea of competing with us is delusional, how can they provide the service we offer? How can they be so clean? Tweeted a minister from a foreign country in response to the PM of India scuba diving in Lakshadweep and set off a tourism war with India. In response many people in India tweeted #BoycottMaldives, which set off a series of offers to develop Lakshadweep as an alternative to Maldives. 

Tourism in India peaked in 2019 before the pandemic, with foreign tourist arrivals at 1 crore and domestic tourism at 230 crores. 1.6 lakh Indians travelling to Maldives in 2019 and second place in their tourism arrivals is a small fraction of the potential travellers going out of India. It’s hard to tell how many of the 2.7 crore departures from India in 2019 were tourists and how much was business and immigration. McKinsey puts the number at a little over 2 crores. (https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel-logistics-and-infrastructure/our-insights/from-india-to-the-world-unleashing-the-potential-of-indias-tourists). 8 crore Indians are expected to travel out of the country for tourism by 2040.

What does this mean for tourist locations in India?

Even if we say all of the 1.6 lakh people stop going to Maldives and visit our locales they will just be a drop in the ocean, it’s not the number of tourists alone thats the problem. It’s the consequences of bad behaviour and unrestrained activity in sensitive areas. Look at the recent news report of the 4000 trekkers clogging Kumara Parvatha in Karnataka in February during the Republic Day holidays. This story was repeated all across the country in many tourist locations. How do we fix this so we can actually enjoy our locales?

We talk to three people who have been at the fore front of trying solve problems. Ramkumar CB is the vice chair of the global sustainable tourism council to GSTC. It’s an international organisation that trains and builds capacity in industry and government to make tourism more sustainable. With a past heading advertising agencies, he switched to putting money where his mouth is and ran a resort focussed on sustainability. 

Jenny Pinto believes that the business of everyday living must be at the heart of any  discussion on sustainability and climate change. because it is the aspirations and demands of common people that ultimately influence policy, economy and change. she is a film maker, writer, lighting designer and papermaker and founded a lighting design company OORJAA, based in bangalore, that uses waste as raw material. she uses her combined experience  to create communication about the environment. 

Shobana Chandrashekar is the Convenor of Namma Nilgiris, a citizen’s group formed to foster community spirit and find solutions to civic issues in Nilgiris. She is also Founding Trustee of The Nilgiri Mountain Arts Initiative (TNMAI), that runs Gallery OneTwo, a free public art gallery created from an abandoned unlicensed toilet as a free-of-cost platform for upcoming artists.

—

Timecodes

00:00 - Introduction & context

03:32 - The deterioration

12:56 - The irresponsibility

18:33 - Knowledge gap

28:28 - Visitors are like teenagers

33:52 - Belling the cat

40:19 - The policy gap

45:16 - Killing the golden goose

52:34 - Coercion and industry

59:34 - Tourist responsibility

———

Listen to other video-pods on this topic and subscribe to the channel

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/show/6EYcxIPGW0UQvmkk67Ox0x?si=efbf1c2c47d449be

Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oorulabs-podcast/id1682407685 

YouTube link: YouTube.com/@oorulabs 

Website: https://podcast.oorulabs.com 

Join this WhatsApp community to receive updates on OoruLabs Podcast https://chat.whatsapp.com/HquObSYDOFz5DXP6TEh07W