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RESOURCE CENTER

LATEST PAPERS

Kerala Tourism (Conservation and Preservation of Areas) Act - Concerns Intensify 
July 07, 2010

The Kerala Tourism (Conservation and Preservation of Areas) Amendment Ordinance, 2010 (Kerala Ordinance 2010) was promulgated by the Governor on 12th June 2010. It provided for amending the Kerala Tourism (Conservation and Preservation of Areas) Act, 2005. It proposes substituting the State Tourism Conservation and Preservation Committees formed under the Kerala Tourism Act, 2005 with State Tourism Development Authority (DA) for the conservation, preservation and integrated planned development of the Special Tourism Zones (STZs). A few days later, on 29th June 2010, the Kerala Tourism (Conservation and Preservation of Areas) Amendment, Bill 2010 was placed before the State Legislative Assembly, presumably, in order to ensure that the Kerala Ordinance 2010 promulgated does not cease to operate. In this paper, we have critiqued the Amendment Bill and questioned the transferring of regulatory powers of Local Self Governing Institutions (LSGIs) to a parastatal body like DA. This results in the loss of the democratic exercise of powers by the LSGIs. We have also questioned the Ordinance route adopted by the government. With hardly less than 15 days left for the assembly session to start, the move is intended to exclude dialogue with people and their representatives and thereby evade public scrutiny.

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EQUATIONS comments on Draft Island Protection Zone Notification in the context of Tourism 
June 03, 2010

In the continuing saga on amendments to the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) made public the draft Islands Protection Zone (IPZ) Notification, applicable to the Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep Islands. This paper contains our concerns related to this proposed Notification, highlights the need to make the CRZ Notification even stronger and ensure tourism is regulated in the fragile island ecosystems. Our letter that was accompanied with this paper to Dr.Manmohan Singh, Chairman, Island Development Authority is also uploaded.

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EQUATIONS comments to the Pre Draft Coastal Regulation Zone Notification 2010 
May 28, 2010

While we continue to identify various instances of CRZ violations by the tourism industry across the country, the  Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) in April 2010, issued another Pre Draft Coastal Regulation Zone Notification 2010 to amend the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification 1991. MoEF continues to take the notification route in spite of a  longstanding demand by coastal communities, movements and civil society organisations for a comprehensive legislation to regulate the coast. A democratic system of governance calls for a regulatory mechanism through legislation for the significant and extensive coastline of India. This brief paper is our comments related to tourism and  the Pre Draft Coastal Regulation Zone Notification 2010. Our covering letter to Minister Jairam Ramesh is also uploaded.

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Child Pornography and Tourism-Briefing Sheet 
March 15, 2010

Child pornography is a growing concern within India. Through still and video cameras, sexually abusive images of children are produced. These images are accessed via the internet and increasingly now over mobile phones. These technologies also facilitate organised sexual abuse and violence against children by networks of commercial buyers, sex tourists, paedophiles and traffickers. It is linked with several actors across borders and has direct links to tourism. One country can be a place where production takes place, the child used for the pornographic production could be from a second country, and the final pornographic product could be or end up in a third country.  This paper presses home the concerns on child pornography and its links to tourism. Its analyses in brief the current legal framework in India concerning this issue and calls upon the national and state legislature, the tourism, travel, hospitality industry and other stakeholders to take necessary action to address this issue.

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REDD in India - An Independent Monitoring Report 
December 30, 2009

The Indian forests are home to around 100 million people and provide sustenance to them. The paper traces the impacts of Indian forest polices, legislations on rights of communities and its links to conservation in the pre- colonial and post independent India. Within the existing framework of national forest laws, the paper puts the rights of the communities into perspective with international policies including Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). It discusses who would benefit the most from REDD. This paper has been published by the Global Forest Coalition in their publication titled “REDD Realities: How strategies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation could impact on biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples in developing countries”.

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LATEST PUBLICATIONS

Humanity-Equality-Destiny? - Implicating Tourism in the Commonwealth Games 2010 
July 27, 2010

Mega events have little to do with bolstering tourism, and in fact can have a negative impact. The report investigates the links between mega-sport events, tourism, and notions of development. EQUATIONS report examines critically the hopes and myths, as well as assumptions and mental models about tourism’s potential of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Linked to this are the preparations being undertaken for tourists, a key aspect being the transformation of Delhi into a world class city. The social, cultural, economic, environmental, political, and human rights impacts ensuing from the preparations under way are examined. In particular, the place of accountability, democratic process and public consensus in hosting the CWG 2010 in Delhi are explored. Calling for a  re-visioning of tourism policy and practise in India the  research study debunks the myth of tourism being used as a development tool – indicating how it addresses only  the needs of an elite section of the industry and tourists.  The report concludes that scant attention is paid to the impacts of these decisions and developments - some being labelled as unintended consequences and others simply dismissed as collateral damage. EQUATIONS joins many other organisations in the demand that high level enquiries be made into these violations of rights and norms of governance.

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Envisioning Tourism in India 
June 15, 2010

EQUATIONS was invited by the Member Planning Commission Mr Arun Maira in November 2009 to write about our vision for tourism for India. This came about after a series of discussions with him about our concerns related to tourism development in India and how the Planning Process of the Five Year plans should take these into account. Being one of the few critical voices on tourism in the global south, we have often had to focus on tourism’s negative impacts – in policy and in practise. This opportunity to dream and to envision  what we would wish to see was undoubtedly the other side of the coin..Enclosed is our vision for tourism in India and the role we hope to see the Ministry of Tourism play in our country. Along with it, in the annexures, are stories, case studies, people policies and charters that illustrate how  another tourism is indeed possible!

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The Challenge and Prospects of Tourism in Goa Today 
November 30, 2009

In July 2007, Centre for Responsible Tourism (CRT) took birth when Caritas-Goa and the Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP) convened a group of over forty concerned Goans under the Archdiocese of Goa to examine how the church must respond to the fallouts of tourism, reverse the impacts, bring it a human face and enable the benefits of tourism to reach local communities. CRT affirmed the need to study tourism planning and management and how it be effectively brought under community stewardship and management. The initial issues in tourism in Goa that CRT chose to address were: child sex tourism, exploitation of women, cultural conflicts, water abuse, foreign office travel advisories, displacement of people, environmental damage and the empowerment of sub-sectors in tourism. This publication provides an overview, critique and appraisal of the work done by CRT till February 2009. It has also compiled the salient activities and statements made during this period and aims to inspire people to look at steps to humanise tourism and make it just and sustainable.

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Claiming the Right to Say No 
November 30, 2009

In 2008, the Philosophy Department of Rachol Seminary, Goa, organized a three-day seminar on ‘impact assessment of tourism’ for their second-year students. To understand tourism impacts better, some of the seminarians undertook a field research. At that time, Israeli tourists were a prominent foreign tourist group in Goa and there were growing tensions between Israeli tourists and local people. The Rachol seminarians were keen to study these tensions, activities and behaviour of Israeli tourists and their social, economic, environmental and cultural impacts. Another aim was to enable the students to make links between touristic happenings and their theological studies. The methodology adopted for the study was one of seeing, observing, discussions (Israeli tourists, local population, traders, government officials) and photo documentation. This publication of the  preliminary study conducted by the seminarians retains the style of personal observations, personal narrative, unaltered repetitions, much of the writing unedited without insistence on footnotes and references. The study was as much as an immersion experience as it was a research study. This work, the first of its kind to be undertaken by a group of seminarians, has been supported by Caritas-Goa, Centre for Responsible Tourism, Council for Social Justice and Peace, EQUATIONS and Rachol Seminary. At the time of publishing this study, other tourist groups defined by nationality, are making also headlines due to conflict and tension between expectations and needs of tourists vis-à-vis local communities.

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Nature, Markets, Tourism - Exploring Tourism's claims to Conservation in India 
July 15, 2009

This compilation of briefing papers is produced as part of the Life as Commerce Project in partnership with the Global Forest Coalition. The aim of this project is to address the environmental and social impacts of market-based conservation schemes. The primary objective is to raise awareness on the impacts of such schemes and to build and strengthen capacity of local communities, social movements and women's groups to address their impacts. EQUATIONS analysed the prevalence and impacts of ecotourism in the 4 Indian states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

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LATEST PRESENTATIONS

Canopy Tourism: Concept and Practices in the Indian Context 
October 30, 2009

This presentation was made at 5th International Canopy Conference (2009), 25-31 October 2009 Bangalore, organised by Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. EQUATIONS was one of the presenters at their Symposium on ‘Conservation, Community Development, Rainforest Experience: The Environmental, Social and Economic Values of Forest Canopy Based Ecotourism’ on 30 October 2009. The presentation shared information on canopy tourism initiatives in India. These tourism initiatives have been analysed from the perspective of people’s participation in decision making, project planning and implementation and their contribution to conservation. Case studies on the initiatives in Kerala, Elevated Walkways in Thenmala and Tree Houses in Waynad, provide an insight into this emerging form of tourism.

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Situation in India on Child Abuse in Tourism - UNWTO Task Force on the Protection of Children 
March 13, 2009

EQUATIONS was invited to present at the United Nations World Tourism Organisation’s 24th Task Force Meeting on the Protection of Children, at the ITB Berlin on 15th March 2009. It was the first time since the task force was formed that a presentation was made on the situation in India, and therefore the moment was historic in some ways. The presentation drove home the point that exploitation of children was mostly unacknowledged by the industry and policy makers. That combined with extremely weak protection mechanisms resulted in high degrees of vulnerability for children who fell easy prey to perverted tourists – both domestic and international.

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Tourism Trade and Biodiversity 
February 19, 2009

This presentation was on the occasion of Bombay Natural History Society’s 125th year. EQUATIONS was invited to organise a workshop at their International Conference “Conserving Biodiversity in a Globalising India” 17-19 February 2009 in Bangalore.   The presentation served as the keynote address to the workshop and is in three parts: Interrogating the assumptions, myths and realities of globalisation, Exploring the trends in conservation ideology and its implications, Examining how tourism plays its part in this drama – its overt and covert agendas and their implications on biodiversity and people’s rights.

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Critical Legal Issues for Protection of Children 
December 09, 2008

This presentation done by EQUATIONS in a meeting organised by the Human Rights Law Network in Kerala (December 2008) focus on the lacunae and loopholes in the legal system on the protection of children, particularly from sexual abuse in tourism. The case of Jakob Spalti a Swiss national that EQUATIONS investigated is used to explain how weak the legal system and protection mechanisms are. EQUATIONS’ efforts at influencing a Children Code Bill to cover such lacunae are also delineated.

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Male Child Abuse in Pilgrim Sites in India Part 1~2 
September 06, 2008

This presentation (in two parts) is about the research study that EQUATIONS conducted in 2008-09 with the support of ECPAT International on male child abuse in well known pilgrim sites in India- Puri in Orissa, Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh and Guruvayoor in Kerala. It describes the need for the study, its methodology and findings and calls for urgent action, legal and protection mechanisms by various stakeholders to ensure that children are not exploited.

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LATEST EQUATIONS IN THE MEDIA

Predators on the Prowl 
July 19, 2010

As child sex abusers find new hunting grounds in Kerala, the police struggle to get their act together! For over 20 years, Jakub Spalti, a Swiss tourist now aged 82, was a regular visitor to the famed Kovalam beach in Thiruvananthapuram. Giving English lessons to boys from poor families, he was a familiar face for the locals. But that was to change two years ago, when a complaint from two children compelled the Kerala Police to register a case of child abuse against Spalti, leading to hls arrest and the confiscation of his passport. Spalti then jumped bail and has since disappeared, though many in Kovalam say he has been visiting the beach.

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NGO expresses concern over tourism Bill 
July 12, 2010

Equations, a research, campaigning and advocacy organisation, has expressed concern over the Kerala Tourism (Conservation & Preservation of Areas) Amendment Bill 2010 on the grounds that it will usurp the powers and mandate of local self-governing institutions.

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Tourism Act encroaches upon powers of LSGs: NGO 
July 10, 2010

Equations, a leading NGO working for sustainable tourism, has criticised the Kerala Tourism (Conservation and Preservation of Areas) Act, 2010,  saying that the Act, like its earlier 2005 version, encroaches upon the powers of the local self-governments.

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10 Wonder Women - Rosemary Vishwanath - Chief functionary, Equations 
March 15, 2010

Rosemary Vishwanath has studied all over the country; her father was in the Air Force. She completed her graduation from St Stephen's College in New Delhi and her post graduation from IIM Bengaluru. She worked in HR development for five years and then decided to work in the non profit development sector. She believes that she belongs here and looks back at the last 20 years as being both challenging and satisfying.

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Eagles flying on the beaches between the decent tourism providers and the decent tourists Tourism in Trouble 
March 03, 2010

Male child sexual abuse by tourists are not a rare case in Kerala. Jacob Spalti is one among the many paedophiles who visit the Gods' Own Country. The article talks about different cases in the recent past and the ineffectiveness of the Zero Tolerance Campaign on Child Abuse put forward by the tourism department in Kovalam. The article also highlights how girls from Russia, Nepal and Bangladesh are supplied as escorts by the sex mafia, “Special Welcome at Wayanad” for the young IT professionals and the story of tantric massage available in the tourism destinations of Kerala.

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LATEST GALLERY

Habitations close to sea, Mayabunder, Middle Andamans

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Andamans: Coastal Area Assessment

Total Pictures in gallery: 18