Mv ganga vilas a welcome push for riverine tourism

Mv ganga vilas a welcome push for riverine tourism

The travel-tourism-hospitality sector got a symbolic boost on Friday, with the Prime Minister launching the MV Ganga Vilas from Varanasi. The luxury 51-day cruise — operated in partnership with private players by the Inland Waterways Authority — will traverse several states, two countries and make stops at about 50 tourist and heritage sites along the Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems. The Ganga cruise, though, should be just a beginning in tapping the unrealised potential of India’s numerous and diverse river systems for tourism. At the same time, the expansion must take into account the best practices from around India and the world, while ensuring local communities and the environment are not given short shrift.

From Kipling’s Kim to Gandhi’s travels and the Palace on Wheels, the Railways has been essential to how travel is imagined and depicted across the Indian Subcontinent. At approximately Rs 25,000 per day per person, MV Ganga Vilas is more in line with the latter than the former. Both the PM and Shipping & Ports Minister Sarbananda Sonowal have cited the jobs that riverine tourism could bring to states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Assam. But employment generation must go hand-in-hand with ecological repair. Two of the greatest threats to India’s rivers — silting and pollution — must be addressed for the government to realise its goal to increase cruise passenger traffic from 4 lakh people to nearly 10 times that figure. But this growth, to be sustainable, must involve local communities. While there is potential for larger, luxury liners, riverine tourism could also expand and cater to travellers from different economic strata. Also, smaller vessels may pose less of an ecological challenge.

While the Centre’s push in the sector, with the PM as the face, is welcome, states and the private sector too must be brought on board. There is, for example, much that east Indian states can learn from how Kerala monetises and maintains its backwaters. The hospitality sector is labour-intensive and can provide some of the formal jobs that a transitioning Indian economy so desperately needs. And given the growing global market for ecologically-conscious travel, India can — if it is meticulous and enterprising in its planning — protect its rivers and create jobs at the same time.