New Delhi, Jun 12 : The Northeast may see a surge of young tourists soon.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said
each of the over 30,000 colleges in India should send a hundred students
every year to the states in the Northeast. If the idea is implemented,
the annual domestic tourist number will be a whopping 30 lakh.
Modi made the reference as part of elaborating the government’s Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat
slogan mentioned in President Pranab Mukherjee’s address to Parliament.
“We have 30,000 colleges in the country, why can’t 100 students from
each of these colleges visit the Northeast once a year?” the Prime
Minister asked in Rajya Sabha during discussion on the President’s
address. “Imagine how it would help tourism, eco-tourism and help young
people understand the problems of their brothers and sisters in the
Northeast.”
Senior journalist and author B.G. Verghese
said while it is not a new idea, the concept of familiarisation with
the Northeast is a good one. “But it should be done with planning, may
be letting students live in a university and play a football match,”
said Verghese.
The Prime Minister’s move matches an idea
his determined opponent and former DoNER minister Manishankar Aiyar had
introduced. As DoNER minister, Aiyar introduced the practice of
providing airfare as LTA to central government servants in order to
holiday in the Northeast. The practice helped domestic tou-rism in the
region.
Capacities in the hilly region are limited
and infrastructure uneven. However, officials said if the government is
determined to increase domestic tourist potential, it would also have a
plan for backing it up with infrastructure like hotels, roads and
transport. Verghese questioned if 30 lakh students are going to visit,
can the railways cope with it? He felt concession tours during summer
months would be a good idea.
Currently, air connectivity to the region
is prohibitively expensive. Airfare from Calcutta to Bangkok costs less
than a ticket from Delhi to Dimapur.
Modi also spoke of an idea he had floated a
few years ago as Gujarat chief minister and referred to it during
election speeches also. As Gujarat chief minister he wanted 200 women
police personnel from each of the eight Northeast states to be deployed
in Gujarat for two years.
“The families would visit and people would
understand each other. This would help integration,” said Modi. The
plan had not worked out, allegedly because the Centre had not given the
nod to such a move.
Over the past two years, domestic tourism
in northeastern states, particularly in Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and
Nagaland, has risen by over 30 per cent. Coupled by a task of increasing
capacities as envisioned in Vision 2020, the Northeast could be a new
destination for domestic tourists.
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