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Cover Story |
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| GOT IT! |
Think tourism in India and the first images that will flash through your mind is — the Taj Mahal and the Indian tiger. Tigers, and the protected areas created for their conservation, are the dominant motif of the picture postcard from favourite holiday destinations. If you’ve ever seen a tiger postcard, it’s an even money bet that the picture is from the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve — one of the most popular tiger reserves in the country.
But don’t let the pretty picture fool you — the situation in Ranthambore is anything but pretty. Conservationists allege that tigers are disappearing from the park at an alarming rate. The crisis has been caused by a number of well-known reasons — from organised poaching to human pressures on the park’s resources. But some believe that there is more to the tiger crisis. The business of hospitality and the mismanagement of tourists could be damaging the park and its magnificent animals. But more importantly, they say that the way this business is organised could be seriously jeopardising the relationships between the animal inhabitants of the park and the humans that live outside.
They say tourism is benefiting a few but hurting many, which is why anger is intensifying against conservation. In this classic and much repeated fight between the rich and the poor, the problem is confounded by the perception that the lawmakers and the beneficiaries are often the same people. People in the town neighbouring the sanctuary will tell you that their problem is that people who direct conservation policies profit from the regulations that promote tourism and park management.
They even believe that this is ultimately hurting the very species that brings tourists to this back of beyond place. Tourism, they say, in the way it is practised in Ranthambore, is part of the scourge that is killing tigers — slowly but inexorably.
Many conservationists disagree. They say tourism is big bucks, which can be invested in protection. Tourism is pleasure and education, which can help build the constituency to protect, conserve and cherish the wild beasts. But what happens when the owner-proponents of tourism are the same as the manager-proponents of conservation? Does this compromise their position? Does this compromise conservation? kushal pal singh yadav travels to the tiger reserve and then to Jaipur, to see how Ranthambore-style tiger tourism could well decide the Indian tiger’s fate.
Tiger tourism is special because here business is based on conservation. If there are no tigers, there will be no tourists. The moot question is what does this business do for conservation? |
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Surya Sen / CSE | | As tourism has flourished in R |
In 2004-05, the department says that about 100,000 people visited and its receipts at the gate were Rs 1.67 crore. But this is a small proportion of the tourist earning.
The tourists pay the forest department gate fees. But they also pay the hotels charges to stay in their rooms. The volume of this business is more difficult to assess. The Tiger Task Force report, submitted in August 2005 to the prime minister, estimates, on the basis of data supplied to it by officials, that the annual turnover from the 21 top hotels is Rs 21.81 crore. If this is correct, then the park (and tigers) are poor gainers from the business of pleasure and education.
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Lack of regulation has meant that many hotels have come up on agricultural or charagah (grazing) land, within a 500-metre radius of the park boundary. “The demand for new hotels has led to the sky-rocketing of land prices,” says a local hotelier. Along the Ranthambore road, land prices have gone up from Rs 1.25 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh per hectare (ha) 10 years back to anywhere from Rs 30 lakh to Rs 40 lakh per ha today, depending on the proximity to the park entrance. “Due to the high prices villagers prefer to sell the land near the park,” says Hemraj Meena, a guide at the tiger reserve.
Most hotels are located along the Ranthambore road, which runs from Sawai Madhopur to the park entrance. A number of hotels are located very close to the forest boundary. According to 2003 records of the field director of the Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, 15 hotels are located within one km of the forest boundary. Of these, 12 are located within 500 metres, three at a distance of zero metre from the forest boundary and one within the forest area
(see graphic and table in PDF format: Too close to nature). Since then, more hotels have been added to the category of too-close-for-comfort. In addition, land adjacent to the park is being bought and converted into farms. Many are just buying the land so that they can build hotels in the future. In effect, this high-value real estate is undergoing a transformation — to the detriment of its original owners and users.
Currently, there are no regulations that determine how close hotels and other commercial establishments can be to the reserve, but there is a general consensus that some distance should be maintained. “There is no locational or land-use policy for areas around the national parks and this has led to a number of hotels being located dangerously close to the forest areas,” says Rajesh Gopal, director, Project Tiger. In addition, deviation from traditional land use and conversion of agricultural and grazing land for commercial use is also not regulated. Flexible regulations
The effort to bring some regulation has always been stymied, allegedly by powerful tourism interests. |
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