Wildrift Adventures

(Private firm, in context of eco-tourism inputs into cultivators’ proposal)

Dear Sir,

We run adventure tourism facilities and for over ten years have been testing models for eco-tourism that efficiently meet tourism and development goals. In our experience prototype eco-tourism by external agents provides neither high quality tourist experience nor meaningful development benefit for the destination, while community-controlled options allow both sustainable tourism and sustainable development. Local communities now largely control three successfully running campsites that we have set up in Kumaun over the years.

In April 2004, when we had been following with some trepidation reports about proposals for prototype eco-tourism in Delhi ridge, riverbed and villages, the planner who advises us on local / regional development aspects of our work sought our views on viability of community-owned eco-visitation vis-à-vis old cultivator communities at Yamuna. After several discussions we concluded that such options would be apposite not only from perspective of old communities but also for sustainable visitation on riverbed and ridge as well as for broad-basing tourism attraction of Delhi as a city. Cultivators’ communities themselves were inclined to pursue the idea and we suggested they make a proposal to government for permission and identified three areas of technical inputs that they would need for this – visitation management (which we offered to assist with), attraction interpretation (on which a linguist scholar offered archival research and a science activists’ NGO offered inputs on environment / agro-technology issues) and tourism-development interphase (for which our planner adviser volunteered). Letters were sent to Ministries of Urban Development, Environment and Tourism requesting information about their plans and possibilities of incorporating in them such a proposal. These letters, response to which is awaited, are enclosed along with a web-post with pictures of the settlements.

Now the above-mentioned Public Notice proposes a commercial IT Park on the riverbed. We are unable to fathom the rationale for this. Whereas in the hills, with tourism central to economic-base and the attraction diffused, there is a certain inevitability about commercialization of natural tourism attractions, in Delhi there are surely no compelling reasons to locate on prime natural heritage asset like riverbed such incongruous development as commercial IT Park that can be anywhere. We urge you to reconsider the proposal.

We have also learned from a reporter that Zonal Plan for Delhi riverbed, which seems the most appropriate statutory framework for incorporating our suggestion, is at stage of internal approvals and also that the cultivators in the riverbed perceive some risk of dislocation. We request consideration of our suggestion for urban-agriculture with community-controlled eco-visitation on riverbed before finalization of Zonal Plan for it or dislocation of cultivators from it.

Best regards

sd/- Manoj Chaudhry

14th October 2004