2 Mar 2004 Vashi(below Sea Level sustained by dykes),Mainland India
Dear Madhusree Mukerjee:
My daughter Ms Supriya Kumar(who is associated with AID gave me a copy of the
book The Land of the Naked People:Encounters with Stone Age Islanders after her
visit to the Islands. It shows that the basic instincts of the rulers have
undergone little change be it the white or the coloured! Look at the way the
powers are treating the Andamans (and Samir Acharya) even after the SC ruling.
Recently I came across two books which try to explain the 'progress' of all that
is....One is Pralaya1999 by MR Narendra(Vidyanidhi) and the Other 'Nostradamus
and Beyond:Visions of Yuga Sandhi' by NS Rajaram(Rupa:2002): Basically we are
into the transition from the Age of Untruth(Kali) into the Age of Truth(Krita)
from 1999 AD onwards till about 2010 AD when violence will reduce the population
from 6 to 7 billion to about 2 billion...then there will be a universal religion
and people will have a policy of life: to live by truth....
One can see this in the inadequacy of modern civilisation basing as it does on
specialisation and the science it nurtures in the face of holistic experience
and cooperative thought based ways of life of the tribes all over...and hence
the need for an ecologically based local experience based life styles coloured
perhaps by the encounters with modern civilisation's facets...your book tells
the story of inadequacy brought about by the destruction of the bases of living
free: the forests..
Its coming.. the fall into unsustainable violence to bring the Age of Truth with
two billion human beings left all over the world...Shall we create conditions
for analogous ecologically sustainable reforestation?If ecologically sustainable
tourism will have to fund this as an essential requirement for sustainability...
R. Ashok Kumar

Madhusree Mukerjee <lopchu@...> wrote:
Hello,

In trying to think about tourism alternatives, I came across this IUCN report,
which provides a useful set of guidelines thinking about sustainable
development:
http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~eagles/EastAsia.pdf

I have a friend who recently paid a lot of money to visit the Gapapagos. She
said there are no facilities at all: not hotels, no restaurants, you can't even
relieve yourself on the island, but only on the launch or ship. She said the
visit was an incredible experience.

The Andamans could be turned into such a high-value tourist site with virtually
no new construction. It has some of the best corals in the world, a fascinating
history, rock climbing--Heinrich Harrer, who crossed the Himalayas, broke an arm
trying to climb an Andaman peak--surfing, archeological relics such as kitchen
middens, caves, and much else. Locals could be intensively trained in local
biology, history, and so on, to work as guides. It would offer not only a sure
income but an increase in local pride and awareness.

Why don't we ask someone who knows the islands intimately--such as the folks at
the Madras Crocodile Bank at Wandoor, South Andaman--to invest some time in
research and come up with, say, ten tours with different themes, designed to
have minimum impact on the environment, but maximum attraction for tourists?

Madhusree

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