Leave pessimism to make tourism a mass movement
Jammu, May 18: Jammu and Kashmir is a place that has special blessings from the Mother Nature and if protected, preserved and promoted professionally the state can become the dream destination for the domestic and international tourists.
With this optimism in mind Earth News has taken yet another initiative to explore the tourism potential of the state and help the new chief minister, who also holds the tourism portfolio and is very keen to promote it, in identifying the new and unexplored tourist destinations through public feedback and positive inputs which is the base line of journalism at Earth News.
A new series J&K:A Dream Destination is the step towards that direction for which the Earth News also invites people to write about such unexplored tourist destinations in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh along with beautiful photographs so that these can be highlighted in these columns with the names of the respective authors to help the government in taping the beauty of the nature for tourism promotion. The write-ups can be mailed to Earth News at editor.earthnews@gmail.com.
Coming back to the main issue it has been observed that it is the pessimism among the people, businessmen and the government that is preventing this beautiful state from exploiting the full potential of its natural wealth to attract huge tourist influx to all the three regions of the state and its sub regions which if promoted positively and without any political considerations can become one of the best tourist destinations in India.
If Gujarat can sell Kachh why can’t J&K sell the abundance of natural beauty? J&K has been bestowed with beautiful places and it seems Nature has blessed us to its full capacity but we are the ones who lack in taping this potential due to our pessimism. It is time we leave our pessimism towards tourism and make it a mass movement instead of leaving it to the government to decide the fate of the J&K tourism.
The problem is that we start behaving as agony aunts even before we start a new project and to add to the miseries of the new entrepreneurs, the red tape of the bureaucracy and wrong and lackadaisical policies of the government discourage the enthusiastic professionals further.
It is imperative for the government to encourage young minds and involve professionals and interested people in finding ways to promote the tourism of the state to make it a real Davos of India.
Since Mufti Mohammed Sayeed seems keen to promote all the three regions it is our duty to keep the government informed and updated about the new destinations that can become new tourist circuits and destinations bringing huge revenue to the state.
Apart from leisure tourism, the pilgrim tourist circuits, and artificial tourist destinations like Tawi Lake project, foot track along river Tawi , tourism potential of Ramnagar-Dudu-Bansantgarh-Latti-Grottta-Jib etc can become new destinations having abundance of natural beauty and wealth.
But at the same time we have to ensure the infrastructure is created for the benefit of tourists and not according to the wishes and whims of the politicians as was done with the Tawi lake project which is said to have been shifted to suit some politicians by the earlier government with the new government saying now that it was not feasible.
The credit for promoting tourism in Jammu must go to Gul Shah, Farooq Abdullah and Jagmohan who had conceived some beautiful projects but due to bureaucratic red tape, and political interference the projects were either shelved or conveniently forgotten.
We have ruined the peripheries of River Tawi by making it encroachers den and instead of making the areas like Mahamaya forests and old fort area a tourist destination we helped it becoming a slum to suit the political circles.
Hence with this series we at Earth News will be highlighting new tourist destinations and fresh suggestions to contribute our bit for the development of the society and also invite all the readers to contribute their bit in this regard.