No Sense

SEPTEMBER 2001 - A recent report in TIME paints a horrifying picture of the decay that is enveloping the Taj Mahal, perhaps the single icon that everyone identifies with India. It’s another matter, the Muslims built it. The famous canals and watercourses stink. Garbage and flies are present in profusion. Plastic bottles lie about, littering the walkways. Coke-fueled factories and a nearby oil refinery are rapidly eroding the great white marble monument, giving it a deathly yellow pallor. Bats and pigeon droppings have spread a permanent stink in the covered areas and walls are singed black where giant beehives have been burnt off. With extra-nosey security personnel frisking everything in sight, leech-like guides hanging on proferring services tourists don’t need and slick pickpockets roving around, the Taj Mahal is not exactly the tranquil monument to love where Diana sat alone and forlorn and more recently our dashing President posed with the first lady for the papparazi. Behind all the rot that is clearly evident, lies the almost still sewage ridden river on whose golden banks this wonder of the world now perches precariously.

The Indians have no defence for this deadly report – I suppose fervent denials must already have graced the Indian dailies. The government mints money from the Taj charging 40 cents from locals and US$ 20 from foreigners. Here in the land of the devolutionists, things are of course in a far lower key where tourists and tourism are concerned. Hardly any people now visit our country and the great monuments are largely empty and alone. What to talk of making money from this rich heritage, we lose money and in the bargain, continue to lose the monuments as well. Every penny ends up in arms, paying loans for previous arms and harebrained schemes that were and are, concocted purely to make a killing for some at the expense of others. The country pays and will always be paying for the corrupt ways of thousands and thousands of ‘selfless’ politicians, generals and the long line of nobodies who were catapaulated into positions they never deserved. One set of rulers wrote off billions made by their predecessors and allies, only to have the favour extended to themselves by their successors. Most countries could not have survived such a non-stop operation of loot year after year and not surprisingly, each succeeding year has seen further erosion of values and investments in the right sectors.

Tourism has not even been in the running. Farces such as celebrating a year of this or that are meaningless and in the end are buried amongst other dead relatives. Safaris and the like are drops in the ocean with the drops getting smaller and the oceans larger. Festivals like Shandur are geared to please the mighty and held only to massage the egos of the tin pots. What they do for the country or its tourism, is nothing. Such stalwarts like Mr. Zardari who are waiting in the wings to serve out various sentences will eventually fly away as part of a brokered deal – where more money will change hands and more lucky officials will make windfall profits of cash or kind. He damaged institutions when in power and the great horse lover that he was, did nothing for thousands of underfed and injured horses yoked by men who had no compassion for their well being. Similarly, he had no compulsions about choppering out the polo ponies to heights where they could not acclimiatize to the harsh conditions and suffered, but then who was bothered? He was the rogue prince and she the tainted queen. No, Shandur didn’t do anything for us and never will till it is part of a much larger and visionary plan that takes the country’s natural potential and converts it into much needed foreign exchange. It won’t happen because speeches are far better than action and the easy life far better than hard work and grandoise schemes far better than grass root development. We won’t have to worry about tourism in a few years time because the way we are going right into the smelly lap of 7th century bigoted clerics, this will anyway be the world’s least visited country.

In a sense of course what is happening to the Taj doesn’t have real significance for us here, since we have nothing quite like it. Thus its pollution and impending death just as its great money making qualities, have no meaning for us. Our sites are already eroded and gone, victims of an entire nation’s indifference. We only converge where we can find neon lights, food and vulgar entertainment. The locals think of tourism in terms of visiting relatives and the hardy ones think the PC at Bhurban is the ultimate limit to the great outdoors. The few who venture beyond metalled roads are so small in number that their presence or absence is equally irrelevant. At the few historical sites like the dead and dying Shalimar Gardens, where a few foreign tourists might be foolhardy enough to venture, the story is the same. Hooligans on the rampage, molesting women and in open daylight, shaming our country. No security and no police of which we have far too much anyway, are ever seen here and people under threat are left to their fate. Girls backpacking in the north are raped and murdered not necessarily in the same sequence. A German couple, the wife draped in miles of the now regulatory form-concealing cloth, have a harrowing time in Lahore at the hands of ‘the next generation’ and consider themselves lucky to escape intact. The Dutch girls incident near Lahore’s canal is too depressing to repeat and so the stories go on.

While we now have a policy on everything and will soon have a policy on policy, can one possibly expect at long last some visionary thinking in Islamabad which can tap into the world’s second largest industry? Having asked such a stupid question, the answer is obviously no. It is rather easy to understand at one level why such a thing cannot ever happen. Consider the odds against making this country the hub of global tourism. There is no law and no order and there never will be. Not for a million years and not even if we wipe the slates and start anew. When there are 140 plus million people literally popping out of the trees every second, you will require an army of terminators, the size of our army, to mow down the law breakers and the unruly mobs, which means they will more or less have to kill off the entire country. Not very practical. Then you have this national penchant of doing no work but talking forever which means that even if there was a group of people, mad enough to want to work, there won’t be any others to support them. Thirdly if we ever get to a stage where laws can be framed, they would be almost instantly violated and soon consigned to the country’s large dust bins. Then if all else falls into place, miraculously, we won’t have a national airline that can arrive and depart with any certainty. There is no hope in hell of ever having a policy that can rationalize the tricky matter of drink without which not many tourists other than holy men from Chad, will be tempted to make the journey to Pakistan. And while there are the Taleban breathing down our necks, no one would like to come here even if offered rubies and gold. Lastly because promoting tourism makes so much sense, it will simply not happen.