The term 'value tourism' is used to establish a new strategy of sustainable tourism. This form of tourism places the highest value on culture and natural heritage while providing visitors with value for their money and time. This strategy seeks to protect that heritage and culture which is the foundation of the travel industry in this country.
Over the past
few years it has been found that the tourism industry has had a destructive
effect on the very product it sells, - the destination. The tourism
industry is already becoming unpopular in some regions for this reason.
Yet tourism does bring to the home, country or region, not only economic
benefits but also cross-cultural friendships and understanding. We
urgently need to design an alternate strategy for tourism, one that
acts as a force for conservation rather than destruction; a strategy
for tourism that is both environmentally friendly and which does not
damage the cultural ethos of this artistically rich country. Complete
article
The IMDT Act in Assam
By H. Victor
In most parts of the world, including all but one state of India, the burden of proving whether one is an illegal migrant or not falls on the accused. In Assam, the Illegal Migrants – Determination by Tribunals (IMDT) Act of 1984 requires the burden of proof to rest on the accuser who must reside within a 3-kilometre radius of the accused, fill out a complaint form and pay a fee of ten Rupees. If a suspected illegal migrant is thus successfully accused, he is required by the Act to simply produce a ration card to prove his Indian citizenship. And if a case makes it past these requirements, a system of tribunals made up of retired judges will finally decide on deportation based on the facts.
In the two decades between 1962 and 1984 according to official records, over three hundred thousand illegal migrants were detected and deported from Assam. In the next two decades, the number dropped to a mere fifteen hundred while the influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh escalated. It was almost as if the water tap had been shut off just as the fire was breaking out. Most observers agree that the main reason for this dramatic reversal is the controversial IMDT Act of 1984, which replaced the Foreigners Act, 1946, in Assam and made it almost impossible to detect and deport illegal foreign migrants.
There will almost certainly be a humane and practical solution to this apparently intractable problem someday. The stakes are too high for this not to be the case. But even though we cannot see that solution yet, we should be determined in our belief that it lies within the ambit of the Indian Constitution and not in some convenient extra-constitutional remedies. However, none of these difficulties should come in the way of implementing the law by detecting and disenfranchising illegal migrants as a first step. It is clear that the IMDT Act has not been effective in doing this is Assam.
The
Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization
and
its Bearing on the Aryan Question
By Michel Danino
We in India often take pride in Indian civilization, in its ancientness and great cultural traditions that go back to the dawn of ages. This is a legitimate feeling, if you consider that Americans or Australians, for instance, often take even greater pride in their countries though they are about two centuries old; of course, their pride has to be mostly in their material achievements, since they have had little to show by way of culture, especially nowadays. India, by contrast, always laid stress on a deep culture before anything else, and yet, contrary to a common misconception, she never neglected material life either, except in recent centuries. Complete Article
Other Topics covered in the article are:
Indus Valley Civilization
Town planning
Agriculture and Technology
Aryan invasion
Government and Social evolution