Editorial: Lifetime high sans safety nets

In an episode of an adventurous outing gone horribly wrong, a woman tourist from Maharashtra and a paraglider operator from Nepal died last week at Keri plateau in Goa, after one of the ropes of the paraglider snapped, causing them to crash into rocks. The police arrested the owner of the paragliding company for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, admitting that the owner had conducted paragliding activities without obtaining permission from the appropriate authority. In the aftermath, the local MLA wrote to the tourism department urging a ban on paragliding activities at the rocky terrain, considered to be dangerous for adventure sports.

The accident in Goa was accompanied by two separate tandem paraglider crashes that took place in Kullu and Kangra districts of Himachal Pradesh, which claimed two lives (one of the tourists was from Tamil Nadu) over the past week. The incident in Himachal Pradesh was the third such fatality in paragliding crashes that was reported this month. Stakeholders have attributed a huge part of the accidents in the state to pilot error, while weak regulations and poor enforcement by local administrations in the tourist hubs have also led to these avoidable deaths. The recent fatalities have called into question the safety protocols and due process followed by companies offering adventure sports activities in India.

In the nation’s touristy hotspots, unsuspecting tourists cough up exorbitant sums of money for a once in a lifetime high, but often end up paying the ultimate price for the greed and the indifference of the operators. In May 2023, 22 people drowned when a double-decker tourist boat capsized in the Poorapuzha estuary in Malappuram district, Kerala. A majority of victims were women and children who were among the 50-odd people travelling on the boat which had a carrying capacity of 25.

Prior to that in December 2022, three people died as a result of a cable car accident which took place in the Trikut Hills in Deogarh, Jharkhand. Around 16 people were inside the cable cars that were stuck in a 766 metre ropeway, 392 metres above the ground, said to be India’s highest such vertical facility. That same year in Chennai, 16 people were injured as a result of a mishap involving a ride called the Free Fall Tower, at an adventure park near Poonamallee. Although there were no fatalities, the Madras High Court flew into action and sought a response from the State government on a PIL seeking the formation of rules and regulations for the safety of people visiting amusement parks here.

Adventure sports activities in India have remained largely unchecked, unregulated and unaudited, at least until the last few years. Three years ago, the Ministry of Tourism unveiled a document titled National Strategy for Adventure Tourism 2022, which included guidelines framed for 15 land-based, 7 air-based and 7 water based activities, which covered the gamut of adventure tourism sports available in the country. Subsequently in November 2023, the Ministry announced it has formulated a model law on adventure tourism which covers the obligations, institutional framework, penalties, registration and the provisions of insurance cover needed for the sector.

Adventure tourism is a sunshine sector for India, thanks to significant geographical advantages like the Himalayas and 7,000 km of coastline. It’s essential that enforcement of safety protocols, periodic training of staffers, and timely maintenance of equipment and peripherals becomes second nature to the industry, lest it drives a nail into its own coffin.