Editor,
I wish to draw your kind attention to an important concern regarding the recently introduced Arunachal Pradesh Tourism Policy 2025-2030.
The new Tourism Policy 2025-30 is a welcome and significant step towards positioning Arunachal Pradesh as a leading sustainable and experiential tourism destination. With its breathtaking landscapes, rich cultural diversity, and abundant ecological wealth, the state has immense potential. The policy rightly emphasises community-based tourism, ecotourism, tribal tourism, and environmental sustainability.
However, a closer examination reveals a critical gap: while the policy promotes community participation and local entrepreneurship, it places limited explicit emphasis on pro-poor tourism (PPT) principles, which are essential for ensuring truly inclusive and equitable growth.
Despite notable progress, our state continues to face developmental challenges, particularly in rural and remote tribal areas. Reports on the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) have highlighted persistent poverty issues in these regions, underscoring the need for an inclusive, community-centred development strategy. Our state has made commendable efforts through various initiatives, resulting in a significant reduction in the multidimensional poverty headcount ratio from 24.23% in 2015-16 to 13.76% in 2019-21 (with an MPI value of approximately 0.059). Nevertheless, with 13.76% of the population still multidimensionally poor, poverty alleviation remains a serious challenge.
In this context, tourism can serve as a powerful tool to generate livelihoods, diversify income sources, and reduce poverty at the grassroots level. PPT goes beyond merely increasing tourist arrivals; it focuses on ensuring that economic benefits, even modest ones, reach the poorest sections of society through local employment, skill development, participation in decision-making, and equitable revenue-sharing mechanisms.
Sustainable tourism and PPT are not separate goals but deeply interconnected. By integrating stronger PPT elements, such as clear guidelines for community co-operatives, priority skill training for economically weaker households, transparent benefit-sharing models, and platforms for the voices of the poor to be heard, the policy can become far more transformative.
As our state moves forward with implementing its tourism vision, there is still time to refine the framework. Embedding robust pro-poor principles would not only attract more visitors but also genuinely uplift the lives of local communities, especially the most vulnerable ones. When the local poor community are actively involved and receives an equitable share of tourism benefits, they are far more likely to support and sustain the state’s sustainable tourism efforts.
I hope the concerned authorities will give due consideration to this important aspect and work towards making the Tourism Policy 2025-30 a truly inclusive model for the state.
Elbina Ngukir,
Research Scholar,
Department of Management, Rajiv Gandhi University