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 aircrafts movement. Needless to say, Visual
Flight Rules have their own significance in a terrain as Tawangs, 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 AAIs 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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