For years, i thought why during vacations we go only to places teeming with people. Is there a place where we can spend our short or long breaks from usual schedule? It’s always difficult to find a far-from-the-madding-crowd tourist destination, yet with basic amenities. But we were lucky to get one, and many others, in the past few months.
For this part of the world, eco-tourism is a new concept, which is hardly a decade old. Some people, including so-called promoters of the idea, don’t understand it in letter and spirit. Last week, I went to a place in a Burdwan village, which was turned into a profit-making eco-tourism project by chopping off eucalyptus and other trees. The promoters got acres of land leased out to them by the state forest department for 30 years around five years ago. The region is rich in ancient terracotta temples on the bank of the Ajoy, one of the major flood-causing rivers in the district. This particular tourist spot, with artificial parks carved out from dense forests once dominated by dacoits even 20 years ago, attracts Bengali middle class families unaware of their misdeed to destroy Nature in patronising economic development of local villagers. True, local economy has changed with this sprawling farmhouse-cum-park-cum-tourist rest house with concrete cottages. But how much are we paying for it? Only in terms of some papers with marks of Gandhi on both sides of these?
Take the example of Bhalopahar in Purulia or Babli and Banalakshmi in Santiniketan. The places are arid in nature, but if you visit it even in scorching summer when the temperature soars past 48˚C, you will not be disappointed by the green foliage it offers. While Banalakshmi was conceptualised by one Niranjan Sanyal about 40 years ago on the outskirts of Santiniketan, the place was dry with infertile land prompting villagers to do everything apart from agriculture. Same is the story with Bhalopahar till one poet Kamal Chakraborty bought land there ushering in green revolution unforeseen before. Now, one can stay at the places for a weekend trip and help both local economy and tourism to grow. Even if there are no tourists for months (as it is quite common in summer), inhabitants of these places can sustain with farm products. Tourism does not necessarily mean uprooting plants and build huge concrete structures, but protecting nature at its best.
In this forum, I request readers to come up with experience and suggestions of eco-tourism projects that you visited in India or abroad.
©Supratim Pal, 2009
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