Cultural heritage of Uttarakhand will be linked with tourism, says Gunsola

Tribune News Service

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Mussoorie, August 2

State Culture Preservation and Fairs Classification Promotion Committee president Jot Singh Gunsola today said efforts would be made to link the cultural heritage of Uttarakhand with the economy of the state. He said this would result in increase in self-employment opportunities in the state and curbing migration from the hills. He thanked Chief Minister Harish Rawat for giving him another opportunity to serve as the president of the committee. He addressed mediapersons here today.

Gunsola said an annual calendar of fairs was prepared last year and the plan was to move forward and link such festivals with tourism. He said the government was planning to make a bouquet of traditional folk dance, song, food, dialects, fairs, ornaments, craft, dress and musical instruments and present them as one entity to tourists. He said that a centre for developing local dialects would come up at Gauchar soon. Gunsola added the Harela festival had become a cultural symbol of the state under which fruits bearing and herbal trees were being planted in the state.

The government has also announced bonus to the farmers for growing fodder and fruit bearing trees in the state. He said the government had planted rudraksh trees in Shivaliks. He said programmes such as Jhumelo etc at the school level were step in the direction of promoting fairs and culture right at grass-roots level.

Gunsola said the government had distributed traditional drums and other musical instrument to around 125 traditional music artistes to motivate them in keeping the state’s tradition and culture alive. He said the government was committed towards promotion and preservation of culture and tourism and had increased the culture department budget from Rs 6 crore to 42 crore. Municipal Committee president Manmohan Singh Mall, local Congress unit president Satish Dhaundiyal, Umesh Vaish, Ramesh Bhandari and Vinod Semwal were present on the occasion.