Shadow of silk road reminds India of the Himalayas

To take on China’s proposed One Belt One Road in Nepal with a holistic development of the Himalayan region, India will take help of international bodies such as UNESCO and WWF
Shadow of silk road reminds India of the Himalayas

NEW DELHI: India has planned to take on China’s proposed One Belt One Road (OBOR) in Nepal with a holistic development of the Himalayan region. It will take the help of international bodies such as UNESCO and WWF for the move.

Documents accessed by The Sunday Standard reveal that the sustainable development in the Indian Himalayan region with emphasis on reviving infrastructure for heritage tourism would involve states and Union ministries such as Culture, Environment, Skill Development and Tourism. The proposal will receive support from Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) Gujarat for strengthening skill and entrepreneurship landscape in the Himalayas. India had decided to stay away from the Chinese-proposed new silk road citing strategic concerns.

According to officials, a five-point action plan has been sent to the ministries, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, UNESCO and WWF. The joint team will review tourism policies of mountain states and is expected to come out with best policy and practices.

“Convene state-level dialogues involving multi-sector and multi-stakeholders, promote integrated sustainable policies in key states, identify financial and institutional incentives that will support sustainable development and develop a regulatory framework for minimising impacts and a monitoring mechanism at state and regional level,” the government note said.

The first-of-its-kind major initiative for development of the Himalayan region also includes a proposal to revive springs for water security. The project will be headed by the Department of Science & Technology, consisting of Central Ground Water Board and International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a regional inter-governmental knowledge-sharing centre serving the eight member-countries of the Hindu Kush Himalayas—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.

“The group is supposed to shortlist eight-step methodology and integrate them to revive the Himalayan springs,” the officials said, adding that a major worry for the government is migration from the Himalayan states. Also, the Skill Development Ministry’s role will become all the more important to ensure job growth.

“Skiing in the Himalayas is needed on unprecedented scale to address the issue of migration and unemployment, and focus must be promotion of entrepreneurship, not just the skills, uniqueness of Himalayas in terms of mountain goods and services, developing stronger public-private partnership and development of qualification packs and establishment of network of skill centres across the Himalayas in partnership with private sector,” the documents added.

National Remote Sensing Centre and G B Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment & Sustainable Development under the Ministry of Environment, will work with the stakeholders to prepare the project report by September 2017.

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