The increasing thrust of ecotourism in wildlife reserves makes me squirm. While the tour operators makes merry and their cash registers keep ringing, there is absolutely no mechanism to routinely monitor the negative impacts of tourism in wildlife areas. Is it a deliberate turning the face away from the facts? I doubt so.
Many policy makers think that prefixing the three letters ECO is the panacea for all the evils affecting us. Very little thought is given to implications. Why is it that we cannot have a mechanism for monitoring the reserves on a regular basis? In the mad rat race for mega bucks the eyes of the administrators seem to get blighted.
Forethought has become a rarity among our administrators. Look at the recent strike of auto workers in Kerala. It was clear as day light that a strike was round the corner with the increase in fuel prices. Instead of living in fools’ paradise and giving sermons the minister and administrators should have come up with well thought out plans. This did not happen. Many foreign tourists were put to lot of bother by the strike. Some of them even missed their flight. A state that calls itself God’s own country meted a devils own treatment to the foreign and domestic tourists.
I feel that the Indian Institute of Management should come up with a short term courses for ministers and administrators that are rooted in emergency fire fighting. The ministers and administrators seem to forget that it is the common man’s tax money that they fritter away.
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