Tourism Campaign
Government of Jammu and Kashmir has decided to repeat the tourism campaign they have been doing in early nineties till date, but there has been no visible impact of such campaign on the tourist arrivals in Kashmir.
In the present circumstances when the thousands of families connected with tourist trade are living hand to mouth life in Srinagar and other parts, it would be prudent for the government to use the campaign money to provide them some monitory help. The government should understand that with very low tourism in the current year, hundreds of families living in and around Dal Lake of Srinagar have even no money to give fee to their wards to continue education.
It would be pertinent to mention here that J&K Government has used about Rs 200 crores so far in the campaigns and foreign tours of ministers and bureaucrats, but the results have been very dismal. In such circumstances it would be wise on the part of Governor Satya Pal Malik to make some policy for such families which are 100% dependent on tourism so that they can at least survive.
Post-2016, there has been very low tourism in Kashmir Valley and the families connected with this trade are really reeling under debt and they need some help from the government so that they can survive. Otherwise there would be some bad news like the ones we witness in the media about farmer suicides due to the debts. Many of them have loans from the banks, especially from the J&K Bank. While the bank has given hundreds of crores of waive off to many influential persons, but these tourism connected families are not even given interest waiver by the bank.
