Shillong: Tourism has the potential for income generation in North Eastern states, NEC secretary K Moses Chalai said on Monday.
“Tourism can offer the potential for income generation in Northeastern states. Income generation continues to be a huge area of concern despite massive infrastructural development here,” the North Eastern Council secretary said, addressing a roundtable discussion on ‘Developing a Framework for Seamless Tourist Movements to North Eastern States of India’.
The two-day round table discussion was organised by a policy research centre at the IIM-Shillong here.
The NEC secretary said ‘Off-road’ tourism has immense potential in the North Eastern Region and could be exploited for attracting tourists.
IIM-Shillong Director Prof DP Goyal emphasized on the need to work at the grassroots to understand the challenges involved in developing a framework for seamless tourist movement.
He said, “We need to have dynamic, integrated portals providing upto-date data to help tourists travel seamlessly across the North Eastern Region.
Policy research centre coordinator Sanjeev K Ningombam highlighted the lack of data tracking of tourist and their overall contribution to the economy.
“It is high time we scale up the tourism sector and encash its best potential which can address economic as well as social concerns of the North Eastern region,” he said.
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As NEC secretary K Moses Chalai said, tourism indeed has the scope of generating employment in Northeast India. In this regard, Meghalaya Tourism has been doing a very good job. I love how tourism places like Mawlyngbna in Mawsynram are being supported by the Cooperative societies under Govt. of Meghalaya. With the recent exploration of Dibang Valley, Arunachal tourism is not just confined to Tawang either.