Manish Kumar
Post News Network
Bhubaneswar, June 28: The state tourism department called a meeting of the State Tourism Promotion Council for the first time ever since its inception in July 2013, after this reporter filed an RTI with the tourism department seeking to know how many meetings the council had had since its formation.
The new state tourism policy which came into effect from July 17, 2013 talks about the establishment of a State Tourism Promotion Council. The policy states that the proposed body should have at least one meeting a year. This correspondent had filed an RTI application with the state tourism department a week ago enquiring from them as to how many meetings the council had undertook since July 17 2013 (date of notification of the policy).
Surprisingly, the department since 2013 has never had a single meeting till June 26. The department after receiving the RTI application organised their maiden council meeting June 27 in the last three years. A release from the meeting was issued by the Chief Minister’s Office along with the minutes.
Moreover, the council at its maiden meeting discussed mostly old initiatives repackaged by the tourism department. For instance, one of the issues discussed at the meeting was the setting up of a dedicated tourist police wing.
A source who has already trained a group of proposed tourist police personnel said such an initiative was made long back. “The news is very old. I trained a group of police officials from the state two years back at the Biju Patnaik State Police Academy specifically for tourist police. The proposal as mentioned in the minutes of the council meeting is old and work related to it had started back in 2013,” an ex-official said citing anonymity.
Tourism minister Ashok Panda also mentioned setting up of a tourist police wing four months back during a press conference while announcing Nabakalebara packages by OTDC. Nevertheless, the draft Union tourism policy 2015 applauded the state for coming up with the concept of a tourist police wing.
Experts from the field of tourism meanwhile question the very basis and composition of the council. Himanshu Das, vice-president, Travel Agents Association of Orissa, said, “Forget what they discuss at their meetings. I don’t think they even have any business plans to discuss about during these meetings. They have discussed things which are already in the public domain. Moreover, there is no place for local representatives on this council. Tourism cannot be improved only through the participation of politicians and bureaucrats,” Das said, calling for the process of tourism development in the state to include more stakeholders from the grassroots level.
Sanghmitra Jena, founder of Eastern Treasure India Tours, said, “These councils are meaningless if people who actually work at the grassroots are not included in deciding the course of action for boosting tourism in the state. Only some people close to bureaucrats are called for such meetings and mostly decisions are taken by the bureaucrats who are not aware of ground realities,” Jena said.
According to the tourism policy 2013, the council should comprise the Chief Minister, tourism minister, environment minister, transport minister, Chief Secretary, tourism secretary and several bureaucrats besides a few representatives from the tourism and hospitality sectors.
