[Assam] Boost to NE tourism , greenfield airport at Tawang

[Pradip Kumar Datta]

Boost to NE tourism , greenfield airport at Tawang
   
  Fly to Tawang
  
It is a welcome augury that the Centre has made a move towards setting up a greenfield airport at Tawang, the picturesque town in Arunachal Pradesh that China claims as its own. After conducting a pre-feasibility study that was commissioned by the North Eastern Council (NEC), the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has come to the conclusion that the proposed site is feasible for Visual Flight Rules — regulations that allow pilots to operate aircraft in weather conditions sufficient to allow them visual reference to the environment outside the cockpit to control the aircraft’s movement. Needless to say, Visual Flight Rules have their own significance in a terrain as Tawang’s, marked by hostile and precarious weather conditions. The site for the greenfield airport is a ridge on a hill top about 20 km from Tawang and meets the minimum-distance requirements when it comes to the Sino-Indian border. According to preliminary estimates, the cost of building the airport would be
 around Rs 220 crore that would be funded either through a 100 per cent Central grant or through a 90 per cent Central grant with the remaining 10 per cent flowing from the AAI’s internal resources.
  
An airport, as envisaged for Tawang, was long overdue. It is not only about the strategic significance of Tawang as a frontline area to counter the infrastructure build-up by China on its side of the border as also its military adventurism, but also about making the virgin spot on ‘‘the land of our rising sun’’ a centre of tourist attraction. Tawang, as a matter of fact, does have the potential for tourism as an industry, which then could be replicated in other tourist-potential areas of Arunachal Pradesh — that are in abundance. Just think what a place like Tawang could be if it had been located somewhere in the mainland. By now, the place could have boasted of an incredibly high tourist traffic, both domestic and foreign, with the tourists adding to the economy of the place and the very State. But it is not late for Tawang as it is. Now that a greenfield airport will come up, the town must also have excellent accommodation and sightseeing services for every class of
 tourists. It is here that the Arunachal Pradesh government needs to be responsive and responsible, and it is that government which has to formulate a tourist policy befitting Tawang but applicable to the other hitherto unexplored areas of that State.
  
The flight of Indian tourists to Tawang to marvel at the sheer beauty of one of their own hill stations in a frontier State like Arunachal Pradesh will be an unspoken but powerful message to China: that Tawang is not theirs; that it is ours and will remain so. Of course, the Chinese too can visit Tawang as foreign tourists and go back home with fond memories of a town that India has rediscovered and embellished. Indeed, as China is doing on its side of the border, it is high time that India too, apart from the greenfield project, provided better road connectivity to the Bhalukpong-Tawang route by way of widening the existing road and making it more immune to natural impediments — which is possible in the age of technology. And why only the road to Tawang? Let all roads leading to district headquarters in Arunachal Pradesh from Asom be sheer delight for travellers. Sentinel Assam Editorial 18.02.08


       
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