Over a period of time, our honourable ministers have introduced various schemes and policies to increase the tourism infrastructure of the country, but just like the success of any plan depends mainly on its execution, the accomplishment of any policy is directly linked with the cooperation of people for whom it is being floated – the citizens – as is also believed by our honourable Minister for Tourism, Shri K. J. Alphons. The ‘Adopt a Heritage’ Scheme is for the country and people should take onus of maintaining their legacy, he rightly feels.
BOTT Desk
Sharing his views recently, Shri K. J. Alphons was at his wittiest best and frankly answered many a questions about tourism. Talking about the ‘Adopt a Heritage’ scheme, which many believe has been floated for the big Corporates to invest in, the honourable minister clarified that in India, where there are around 6500 protected monuments, which are not meeting the global standards of tourism, there is a lot of scope for work. He stated that the Government has many priorities and does not have huge unlimited budgets to spend on preserving heritage. In such a scenario, it becomes the responsibility of the citizens to do so. “The heritage belongs to everybody – the monumental legacy belongs to the people of India and not just the ‘babu’ sitting in the ASI office”, he states. So besides being in the Corporate sector, you can be a regional welfare association, an institution, a school and still adopt a monument and develop facilities there – such as toilets, parking, sound and light show, drinking water, wi-fi, and many more. While all this has to be done with the permission of ASI, the minister feels that what the scheme needs as of now is “larger involvement” by the people.
Talking about the Hampi controversy, Shri Alphons shared that Hampi as a destination has immense scope to become a world-class touristy joint, which is perhaps why it has also been shortlisted by New York Times amongst the top 52 places in world to visit in 2019. “Hampi has been chosen as one of the top 10 iconic sites to be developed by MoT. Plus, we also want to give it for adoption and hope to have much better facility there. Look at Purana Qila, Humanyun Tomb and now Red Fort also – all these monuments today have much better facilities than what they used to in the past.
