Sustainable Ethnic Tourism Development in Arunachal Pradesh

Abstract

SustainableSustainable tourism is a new paradigm of development that thrives to conserve and sustain the natural, social, cultural and built environment by involving the local community, which in return contributes to their economic upliftment. This concept of planned tourismPlanned Tourism can be applied in presenting the ethnicityEthnicity of local communities as tourism productTourism Product for special interest touristsSpecial Interest Tourists. Arunachal Pradesh, a state in the north eastern India, is the home to around 26 major tribesMajor Tribes and over 110 sub-tribesSub-tribes with rich ethnic and cultural diversityCultural Diversity. One of the unique features of the tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh is their close relationship with nature which is imbibed in the cultural beliefs and their indigenous traditional knowledgeTraditional Knowledge of conservation and management. This chapter tries to assess the viability of the sustainable lifestyleViability of Sustainable Lifestyle of the state's two major tribesMajor Tribes, namely, the MonpaMonpa tribe and the ApataniApatani tribe, as tourism productTourism Product, who are part of the key tourist circuits of Arunachal Pradesh, namely, Tezpur-Bhalukpong-Bomdila-Tawang and Itanagar-Ziro-Daporizo-Along-Pasighat. To examine the relationship between sustainable tourism development and community participationCommunity Participation, data have been collected through secondary and primary sources and a mixed method, including both qualitativeQualitative Approach and quantitative approachQuantitative Approach, is used in the study. It is found that ethnic tourismEthnic Tourism has great potential for the conservation and preservation of cultural and traditional expressions of these communities by making the showcase of ethnic resources economically viable.