Documentation

According to the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) Global Report 2006, it affects the lives of 218 million children. India has the distinction of the largest number of working children in the world today. Indian official statistics speak about almost 13 million children, but unofficial estimates vary between 60 and 100 million children. In India, as in the world over, tourism is one more realm that pulls in a significant number of children as child labour. This paper links tourism to child labour, informs on the legislative and policy back-up to eliminate child labour and the illusive implementation of the ban on child labour in the hospitality sector.

The promotional slogans and developmental promises around tourism facilitates assault on our natural resources and cultural heritage and puts at risk the principles of equity, sovereignty and democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution of India. This paper examines through numerous case studies how under the bandwagon of tourism development public property is being pillaged for private profits. It also indicates the collusion of policy makers and governments in this process.

Rural tourism in India is increasingly seen as a way for elimination of poverty and inequalities. The country's National Tourism Policy of 2002 by the Ministry of Tourism (MOT) announced its plans of spreading tourism development to rural areas: 'village tourism will be promoted as the primary tourism product of India; to spread tourism and its socio-economic benefits to rural areas'. However, the question remains - can tourism transform to something positive? Or is it the case that when communities adopt tourism they lose more than they gain? To probe this question, we analysed two community based tourism initiatives in this paper - The Endogenous Tourism Project and Mountain Shepherds Initiative. The initiatives have common threads - to see tourism as a means to achieving development goals. However, each is backed by a different institution and following different approaches to implementation.

Most of the concerns raised by us with the Planning Commission documented in ‘Comments on the XI Five Year Plan’s Tourism Report’, April 2007, of the Working Group Report on Tourism and the Steering Committee Report on Tourism have not been considered. In this paper, we critique the final Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007 - 2012), Volume III, Services - 'Tourism Sector' as released by the Planning Commission. We continue to appeal to the Planning Commission to consider an approach that is more broad-based and inclusive. Concerns such as, who grows, who benefits, who is harmed by tourism’s unrestricted and unregulated growth, is tourism non-exploitative, is it socially just and equitable and are its processes of planning and implementation democratic, need to be addressed if we are to see tourism truly inclusive and people centred. This, we believe, will do justice to an activity that is ultimately based on people – the tourist and the communities visited!

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the Planning Commission’s XI Five Year Plan’s Tourism Report. While appreciating certain positive trends in the Report, we appeal to the Planning Commission to consider an approach that is more broad-based and inclusive. Concerns such as, who grows, who benefits, who is harmed by tourism’s unrestricted and unregulated growth, is tourism non-exploitative, is it socially just and equitable and are its processes of planning and implementation democratic, need to be addressed if we are to see tourism in the XI Plan truly inclusive and people centred. This, we believe, will do justice to an activity that is ultimately based on people – the tourist and the communities visited. We highlight the insufficient attention paid to impacts tourism has had on specific constituencies (like women, children, tribals, dalits, other minorities), labour issues, the lack of strategies to ensure sustainable tourism, the role of government in tourism infrastructure development, and the need to bring in sharper perspectives and positions on ecotourism and climate change.

Does policy and practise of responsibility in tourism differ in terms of what is stated and what happens on the ground? Is responsible tourism yet another buzzword or are there paradigm shifts in the way tourism planners, policy makers and the industry understand tourism’s role, and wish to position it. Going beyond the “feel good” power point presentations, it is important to face the ingredients and promises of responsible tourism and what it really hopes to deliver. The paper also questions if it is adequate to rely on celebrating individual (and no doubt laudable) initiatives or is a larger scaled-up policy and “model” level transformation the only way that tourism can be more responsible. The paper attempts to frame these questions and seek directions from experiences and realities of tourism development and impacts in India.

This publication called 'Working Paper Series 2007-08' is a compilation of our Papers and Campaigns of the year 2007-08.

Injustice continues to haunt the Narmada River Valley! The Narmada Valley projects comprise 30 large dams, 135 medium size dams, 3000 small dams and a minimum of 75,000 kms of canal networks to direct the waters. Despite twenty years of struggles and supreme sacrifices and regardless of the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal awards, Supreme Court and High Court orders, over a quarter of a million people, a large number of them tribals, are yet to be rehabilitated. While they await rehabilitation, a fresh set of displacement is being triggered off in Kevadia, Gujarat, the site of Sardar Sarovar Dam, for a huge tourism project centred on this "Pride of Gujarat".

This dossier is located within the context of increasing global discontent and community protest against interventions of International Financial Institutions (IFIs) in the developing world. It specifically presents a questioning and critique of their operations in tourism. As the nature and impacts of tourism cross boundaries and affects entire regions, we present an analysis of the issue based on experiences from the Asian region and in specific areas of focus of IFI activities. The dossier has important contributions from activists who have been writing and campaigning on these issues, in addition to EQUATIONS’ own work on monitoring and researching IFI activities in tourism. It also includes the depositions on the tourism sector which was part of the Independent People’s Tribunal on the World Bank Group held from the 21st – 24th of September, 2007 in New Delhi. This dossier aims to reach out to movements, grassroots groups, civil society organisations, researchers and policy makers drawing attention to the implications of increasing IFI activities in tourism in the region. We call for more research, campaign and advocacy on these critical issues.

Alfred Brush Ford’s business company ABF International came to India in 2005 with a spate of investments in mega tourism projects. The largest one with an investment of $300 million was a Ski Village to be built in Kullu District of Himachal Pradesh. The Himalayan Ski Village Limited (HSV), in which Alfred Ford maintained the largest share, was floated for it. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the proposed Himalayan Ski-Village Resort in Kullu District was inked on 9th December 2005 with the then State Cabinet approval. Local campaigns against the projectbegan in 2006, but this did not lead to any change by the HSV management. Jan Jagran Evam Vikas Samiti (JJVS), a local NGO based in Kullu District, managed to get a hold of the copy of the MoU which revealed that the government had heavily short changed public and the state’s interest for a property development plan for private profits. Irrevocable rights to use water, power and land is what shocked the residents of the proposed project area. It is also a project that has been approved without due public consultation. This publication is a fact-finding report on the project and shows why local communities are campaigning against the project.

Tourism policies focus on the growth and promotion of tourism and hardly acknowledge the negative fallouts of tourism development. In developing countries, tourism development without responsibility and protective measures has led to sexual exploitation of children in the form of child trafficking, child prostitution, pornography, child sex tourism and an increase in child labour. Through examples of the cases of paedophiles, statistics and research studies, the paper highlights the severity of the problem and tracks the responses on this issue in the tourism policy and implementation space. Our call to the Government of India, the Tourism Industry and World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is to acknowledge and assume accountability to mitigate this problem.

In the quest for sustainable tourism, many terminologies and products such as Nature Tourism, Ecotourism and Wildlife Tourism have emerged. This paper examines their various definitions. It enumerates the various laws, policies, regulatory frameworks, impact assessment methods and administrative arrangements around such nature based tourism and examines the extent to which these are practised.

In December 2007, the government tabled the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill (2007) and the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill (2007). According to the official note of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, both the Bills are an attempt to give statutory backing and amend the provisions of The National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy (2007) and The Land Acquisition Act (1894) and to strike a balance between statutorily acquiring land for development and protecting the interests of the people whose lands are acquired. Estimates indicate that since independence (1947), more than 40 million people have been displaced due to various development projects and a large majority have not been compensated. In this paper, we critique both these Bills, as they will determine the basis for land acquisition by the government in the future. Since much of our work is on the impacts of tourism on communities, our critique of these Bills highlights the issues from the perspective of tourism and tourism development linked displacement.

Globally, enclavisation in tourism arose from the need to create exclusive centres of tourism that are safe investments and that which ensures a steady flow of income across all seasons. But, studies show that the intense resource usage by tourism establishments, the resultant environmental pollution, widened income inequalities, displacement of people and socio-cultural effects are some of the adverse impacts associated with tourism enclaves around the world. Economically, these enclaves end up giving little to “host” communities as they wait endlessly for a share of the tourist spending to ‘trickle down’ to them.

When the Special Economic Zone Act was passed in 2005, it generated a euphoric response from the private sector. However, it has raised concerns from those who do not see SEZs benefiting them but rather increasing hardships of economic livelihood and sustenance of people. Tourism is also in the list of industries seeking potential benefits from the SEZ Policy. According to the SEZ Act 2005 and corresponding Rules, only 25%-30% of the total area in any SEZ need be statutorily used for developing and setting up of the industrial/manufacturing units. The rest of the land can be used for developing 'infrastructure'. This gives an open invitation to the hospitality, entertainment and hotel sectors to make the most with SEZs. Further, the National Tourism Advisory Council (NTAC) proposed to the Ministry of Tourism and Culture that the government should also consider Special Tourism Zones (STZs) on the lines of SEZs.

This publication captures critical links between the SEZ policy and role of tourism that needs our continued campaign focus. We hope it serves as a useful reference and spreads awareness on the need to intensify our struggles against this policy.

For decades, activists and civil society concerned with how tourism develops have been influencing the agenda for tourism to be equitable, sustainable and non-exploitative. This has been done through struggles on the ground, interventions in critical national, regional and global spaces, and solidarity actions. Most of the struggles, particularly those in the global south, have been around the resistance to corporate globalization and corporate impunity, reclaiming the commons, protesting the violence and exploitation that accompany the push for certain kinds of mass-tourism and upholding the values of dialogue, dignity, participation, democratization and self-determination. These campaigns and struggles have forced policy makers, governments and the industry to acknowledge the many problems attributable to the irresponsible growth of tourism. While we do not recount these efforts in this paper, they provide the backdrop and the inspiration for the renewed demand to policy makers and industry –Transform Tourism!

India has the distinction of the largest number of working children in the world today. Indian official statistics speak about 13 million children, but unofficial estimates vary between 60 and 100 million children. In the tourism sector, millions of children around the country are trapped in a world of work. Many of them are at risk from hazardous and exploitative labour and denied their basic and fundamental right to education, health and childhood. This paper looks at the reasons why children work, the risks to a child working in the tourism sector, the role the tourism industry employers and associations can play to mitigate this problem and the initiatives undertaken by the International Labour Organisation, World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and Government of India to address the problem.

The Hampi World Heritage Area Management Authority made the Master Plan for Hampi Local Planning Area (2006). This Plan prepared under the provisions of the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 1961, aims to regulate and guide development activities in the planning area. The Plan attempts to understand the heritage area of Hampi and envisages the protection of the historic urban fabric, hillocks, water bodies, forests and prohibited areas. In our critique, we highlight areas where lack of specificity and definitions could lead to multiple interpretations. We also state positions that differ from those of the Plan. We highlight the lack of local community representation in the committees proposed, sustainable tourism vis-à-vis ecotourism, inefficient definition of ‘illegal development’ and the outdated and incoherent statistics used for preparation of the Plan.