Train to Darjeeling

It is not often that tourism departments produce wonders and so India'ssuccess in getting the Darjeeling Hill Railway recognised as a wor...

It is not often that tourism departments produce wonders and so India8217;ssuccess in getting the Darjeeling Hill Railway recognised as a worldheritage site by UNESCO is doubly welcome. Once on a heritage list a site 8211;in this case the steam train, rail track and rail stations is more likelyto be preserved and to endure than if left solely to the untender mercies oflocal authorities or market forces. All those who have done the spectacularjourney from New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling and those who dream of doing itsome day will say a heartfelt thanks to Ashwani Lohani of the tourismministry for making possible technical and financial assistance to keep theDHR running for a long time to come.

There are any number of counts on which valiant trains and tracks winding upthe hills the Nilgiris and Garhwal have them too ought to be preserved forposterity: as a piece of history, as technological marvels and as examplesof mechanised transportation that do the least damage to the environment.But perhaps over and above that is the singular pleasure of riding on a slowtrain through the hills. Even those who would like nothing better thaninterstellar travel in a space capsule should have the chance to discoverit.

The important thing is the DHR will not be chilled in aspic. It will not bea museum piece like all those wonderful but rarely visited and thereforeexpensive to maintain locomotives in the rail museum in New Delhi. The DHR,according to present plans, will be maintained as a functioning railwaysystem and pay partly for itself. Conservation works best when it makeseconomic sense and this is as true of wild life and forests and lakes as ofrail systems. What that usually adds up to is ecology-friendly tourism. Intheory and increasingly in practice everyone benefits, the local community,visitors and wildlife, steam trains, forests. Unhappily, success stories inIndia are few and far between. For every DHR or Kerala the state is soon tobe recognised as a national heritage site there are scores of sites thathave been lost or are in the process of being lost forever because ofofficial neglect and public indifference.

Merely declaring a site a heritage site is obviously only a first step. Aviable conservation plan must follow. Official agencies are not good atmaking or implementing them. Look at the rack and ruin the ASI presidesover. Behind many conservation failures lie not only the dead hand of thebureaucracy but also its lack of imagination. This is not to say the privatesector has all the right ideas and will necessarily be eco-friendly.

Examples to the contrary abound in hill stations and along the coast. Inorder to realise the enormous promise of eco-tourism for India, a strongregulatory framework is necessary as is an environmentally conscious localpopulation. Eco-tourism is the only kind of tourism that makes sense forIndia8217;s most valuable sites historical, natural or community and for localeconomies. There is much to be done before more of the country8217;s heritage islost.