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International Journal of Environment and Sustainability, 2016, 5(1): 18-34  27

tourist season (Redecon, 2005). The average         5. Community Benefit Tourism Initiative
daily traffic volume is 7562 vehicles, which is     Model
equivalent to 11240 PCUs, with 99 percent of
these vehicles being fast moving vehicles. The      First and foremost, the need of the area is to
problem of congestion is compounded by the          have a coordinating agency that acts as a plat-
lack of parking facilities in the town. Both sides  form for synergizing the activities of firms in
of the main road are being used for idle parking,   different sectors as well as different govern-
reducing the available road width. The Mall         ment agencies. Though the Manali Development
experiences the highest parking accumulation        Council was set up in 2004 with powers to raise
with about 700 to 800 vehicles parked on the        money through entry tax, the Council has
road every day. With such a large floating          remained a dormant agency concerned with
population, the pedestrian movement also            generating money without any dedicated staff
becomes a problem due to the lack of road           and a whole time head. As a result, even though
space.                                              the agency has been able to collect more than
                                                    US $9.5 million (as of end June 2014), it has not
4.4 Political                                       taken up any major development project in the
                                                    area so far. It has representatives from different
There are problems of compliance in environ-        segments (local industry, transport associa-
mental law and the tourist trade act. On            tions, representatives of the local community,
average, 60 cases of violations of the tourist      and government officials) as its members, who
trade act are detected by the local authorities     could become a big force to mobilize support
every year. There is no local environmental         and ideas. Only recently has the Council held
NGO working in the area currently even though       some meetings with the stakeholders to
some Delhi-based NGOs have visited and              consider new projects like construction of a bus
studied the area many times. There is no local      stand and a multistoried marketing complex
water pollution and waste policy nor has use of     with a car parking facility and a cultural theatre.
the tourism related master plan ever been           The Council could potentially become a Commu-
thought of. While a master plan was prepared        nity Benefit Tourism Initiative for the Manali
by Town and Country Planning in 1971, it has        area. Since the concerns to be addressed are
never been adhered to strictly, as many struc-      multi-dimensional, a triple SSS model of sus-
tures have come up in the area earmarked for        tainable development with public-private
common facilities. No sustainable tourism           partnership (Figure 4) is proposed.
master plan has ever been prepared, and the
tourism department has hired consultants to         The strategy for implementation has to rely on
develop plans for development of certain tourist    consultation; coordination and information
facilities only.                                    exchange; capacity building; evaluation and
                                                    monitoring; and transparency. One of the basic
From the analysis above, it is clear that in order  reasons for leakage of income and employment
to make tourism in Manali sustainable, inter-       opportunities is a lack of coordination among
ventions have to focus on infrastructure            the SMEs and a lack of skills among the locals.
upgrades (roads, parking, water supply, sani-       Similarly, the infrastructural bottlenecks also
tation, sewage, etc.), coordination among SMEs      arise because of a lack of coordination among
and stakeholders, community concerns in             the development agencies and a lack of
development, skill development, solid waste         consultation with the experts in different areas.
management, and regulation. As government           The Council has to undertake monitoring and
resources may be insufficient to cater to this      evaluation projects to identify the problems and
requirement, it is appropriate to follow the        effective interventions. Besides, the working of
public-private partnership mode.                    the Council has to be transparent with free flow
                                                    of information to all the stakeholders. How all
                                                    this could be implemented is discussed below.

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