How about a master plan for residents?
We’re back, once again, to the drawing board for a new tourism master plan. Every few years a new government comes along, and a new tourism minister decides that planning for the tourism sector needs to be rebooted. Never mind that several weighty, “professionally” produced tourism master plans have preceded the one now currently proposed by the BJP government, and none have been followed or implemented. Some 18 agencies have rushed in to bid for the master plan consultancy contract, Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar told the state Assembly Monday. But what’s interesting ~ and thank god for the few hawkish MLAs like Rohan Khaunte ~ is that Parulekar’s latest baby is practically a replay of the terms of reference of the master plan finalised in 2011.
So how much money are we going to cough up to get a new consultant to tweak and update what many before have already said? The question should have been put to the ruling benches by the comatose opposition Congress. But the former chief minister Pratapsingh Rane seemed more distressed to find there were very few tourism “experts” on the eight-member committee cobbled together to select the latest consultant. Tour operators, charter operators, more members of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) are now to be co-opted to the committee.
It needs to be stressed here that Goa’s tourism industry has ballooned and stretched out uncontrollably, outpacing infrastructure and trampling on the once pristine environment, with nothing but arrival figures and profits in mind. One baulks at the very idea of more “experts” and representatives of the industry sitting down to put to paper their vision for Goa for the next quarter century (in Parulekar’s assessment) with little regard for the overstretched environment or the impact of it on the permanent residents who have no stake or interest in the business, but who find themselves increasingly hemmed in by the tourist influx and edged out of the planning picture.
A recent development is the packs of tourists driving down from Karnataka to picnic at Patnem and Palolem on a Sunday. (One reason, of course, is the roads are much better, this side of the border.) The Canacona beaches empty out of locals and foreign tourists on what’s been dubbed the ‘Kannaday’. More to the point, when do we say this many arrivals and no more? We are after all a state of 1.54 million and a coastline of just 105 km.
The new tourism infrastructure planned for Panjim ~ as reported by this newspaper on Sunday ~ is just one instance of the myopic vision of the political-bureaucratic lobby that calls the shots. Rather than decongesting the entrance to the capital by relocating the noisy, intrusive cruise rides away from the city, the Goa Tourism Development Corporation will sink Rs 63 crore on a bouquet of new infrastructure primarily for this niche of tourism. Two platforms are being built under the Mandovi bridge to accommodate 135 buses (this quite apart from the Kadamba bus stand), and another multi-level structure is planned for 456 cars opposite the cruise jetty. If GTDC chairman Nilesh Cabral has his way, a two-storey building for tourist facilities will also somehow be wedged into the jetty.
While the spike in the tourism arrivals graph may seem impressive on paper, on the ground, the increasing numbers of domestic arrivals and the shrinking ratio of foreign arrivals (except for the Russians) are obvious signs of stress in the industry. One theory has it that the bloating domestic market is driving away the more discerning international traveller. There is of course the argument, that one tourist’s money is as good as another’s. But the larger question is, is Goa better off getting a better quality of traveller who feels for the place and respects the environment, or is it better off attracting larger and larger numbers of low-end domestic tourists who have little respect even for a clean beach?
