Uttarakhand has lost the much needed cooperation of the Japan Government in modernisation of the tourism sector, including the facelift of the Chardham Yatra route at a time when the State Government needed it the most.
Work had been going on to finalise the project between the officials concerned of the Tourism Development Council (TDC), Uttarakhand, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the past two years. The focus of this ambitious tourism project in which the JICA had shown interest to invest upto Rs 700 core, was on modernisation of tourism infrastructure in the hill State and more importantly, strengthening basic services on the important Chaardham pilgrimage route.
More so, in this regard, the JICA had sought a detailed proposal from the department concerned of the State Government on how the tourism sector in Uttarakhand could be modernised. Subsequently, the State tourism department submitted a proposal covering all requisite details to the concerned authorities of the JICA.
“But the authorities concerned at JICA did not approve of the pattern in which we had submitted our plan for modernisation of the tourism infrastructure in the hill State,” AK Dwivedi, Joint Director, Tourism Development Council (TDC), Dehradun, told The Pioneer in an exclusive interview.
“We would like to maintain that preparations from our side were full. But later on, it seems the officials concerned of the JICA did not show any interest in cooperating with us in the tourism sector. Therefore, the project could not move forward,” Dwivedi added. The interesting fact is that initially the JICA was to cooperate on facelift of the Chardham ‘Yatra’ and it wanted to provide financial assistance about
Rs 300 crore for strengthening tourism infrastructure on the Chardham Yatra route. later, the JICA also expressed its desire to expand the area of cooperation and offered to work in other areas of tourism sector in the State, increasing the financial package upto Rs 700 crore.
However, it is believed that had the project with the JICA materialised, it would have gone a long way in improving the basic infrastructure in the tourism sector, particularly in the Chardham Yatra route. Under the modernisation programme, both the agencies were focusing on how to strengthen the basic infrastructure, i.e. better roads, creating new parking facilities and renovation of guest houses, development of alternative routes, better air connectivity by developing helipads to name a few, apart from improving basic facilities on the Chardham pilgrimage route.
Thus, work was going on finalising the areas of cooperation in the tourism sector for the past two years. Finally, the JICA backed out from this project.
It is difficult to say whether it was laxity on part of the State Government or the JICA was not interested in extending cooperation to Uttarakhand in the tourism sector, but the fact is that the Himalayan State has only allowed the chance to slip away when it required the much-needed cooperation when the basic infrastructure has been badly ravaged by the nature’s fury in the State.