Culture and tourism on the backburner

This week, we had Tourism Day and the birthday of the Taj Mahal, a world treasure. But, what was the celebration? A Supreme Court ruling that no one can visit the Taj Mahal by moonlight. Why? What is the difference between day and night in a twenty four hour cycle except dark and light!

Surely that decision should be left to the visitor and surely the same set of rules for night or day should apply for entries and exits to this great tomb. Why are we so foolish? Why do we make ourselves a laughing stock? If there is true concern about the future preservation of the Taj, then the rampant city pollution must be brought under control. That, is far more important than entries and exits and timings!

No one seems to care about the real problem. I suppose it is much more complicated to address the horrors and legislate to stall the filth that is destructive. Please allow people in and out for twenty four hours, seven days a week. Get on with it and stop being so backward in thought and action. Conservation has moved ahead and the Indian mind is lagging behind.

Green the environs and create a meditative space, an area of calm and solitude. Get a landscape architect to extend the gardens and the trees beyond the walls, for a square furlong. That is where you can have great events without microphones. Far more sophisticated and pure.

Natural beautification makes sense rather than the ghastly styling done by the PWDs of India who just do not know any better. When Babur came to India his first comment was that: ?Hindustan is a country of few charms…? And, he was so right. On our own, back to our indigenous ways, we are moving towards recreating those bland, charmless, ?deserts?.

The Taj is seen to be our greatest monument and we treat this tomb with such scorn and disrespect. The latter, because we reduce it to being the product that the babudom of India sells. At its gateway, instead of a sense of serenity that should overwhelm one, touts and pimps, beggars and babus envelop you. Why doesn?t the Court order that breed of corruption to stop with immediate effect. Why doesn?t it insist that the local municipality do its job? It would be salutary if the apex court would set a precedent for all national treasures and their environs. A first step in the right direction.

Imagine a Varanasi that is not saturated in stench, dirt and filth. What joy it would be if the municipality there did its work in the name of God under strictures issued to it by the Supreme Court since the executive does not appear to function in this area.

Why should any Indian or foreigner want to be assaulted from arrival to departure by pimps and touts as well as the bureaucratic arms of the administration? It cannot be any human being?s idea of a vacation or a sightseeing tour or a chill out. It is all so nauseating.

We must be the only country in the world where the muck is all encompassing, where cheating is the norm, where the authority is not much different from all the other irritants. Our administration behaves today, much like how the colonial powers must have done with the natives. The same arrogance, the same indifference. They seem to set the standard, one that is well below any line of dignity.

Our minister of tourism is working against time to establish an attitudinal change. Will she carry the support of all the other ministries and arms of government that have to come together to make the change happen? Will the administration do what their mandate demands or will they carry on being in cahoots with all those who exploit the system? Who will wield the whip? Who will order and implement the correctives? When will the redundant and ineffective lot be banished into retirement. Let us stop putting culture and travel on a backburner. It is a money spinner, an employment giver, a pride winner…all the things we lack today.