Emptying the landscape: outsider place-making, tourism and migration in Sikkim, India

Abstract

Lachung valley in north Sikkim, India is valorised and marketed as a pristine, traditional, culturally and ecologically rich landscape. Tourism in Sikkim relies on a trail of non-local tour operators, hotel chains and migrant labour, which in turn, has emptied the landscape of local communities who out-migrate for education and employment. This emptying however, comes not from displacement or dispossession, but from the effectiveness of local land regimes that allow many locals to live and work in other parts of the state while generating profits from the land. The paper focuses on tourist-based placemaking in Sikkim, India to illustrate, first, the reconfiguration of socio-spatial relationships as a result of tourism as a development strategy; second, the transformation of the landscape and the attendant mobilities that it enables, and finally, the material, social and political assemblages crucial to the production of the constantly shifting understandings of space and place.

Keywords:

• Landscape tourism
• Himalaya
• migration
• Sikkim
• borderlands
• rural livelihoods

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank members of the tourism industry in Gangtok and Lachung for sharing their stories, experiences and opinion on travel and tourism in Sikkim, Mrs. Matilda Isaacs Bhutia for support with logistics in north Sikkim, Professor Duncan McDuie-Ra, for insights and input during fieldwork and the anonymous reviewers from Landscape Research for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Migrants from outside the Himalayas are colloquially referred to as ‘Indians’, ‘plainsmen’ or ‘bhaiyyas’ (brother in Hindi). The choice for predominantly male-only staff can probably be attributed to the nature of the work (late-nights, multiple roles as cook, manager, waiter, etc.), as well as the location of these hotels which are often in semi-urban, rural locations and employing females could require additional amenities and guarantees for their safety and well-being.

2 Sikkimese citizens are ethnically divided into three broad categories-Bhutia, Lepcha and Nepali. The Bhutia and Nepali ethnic groups are comprised of numerous tribes and ethnic groups (see Gurung, 2011).

3 Under Revenue Order No. 1, 1917 land belonging to members of the Bhutia and Lepcha communities cannot be transferred to members of other communities. In addition, non-Sikkim Subjects cannot buy land in Sikkim. However, there are several exceptions tightly regulated by the state, including the provisions of the Sikkim State Site Allotment Rules 2012, Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013, Municipalities Act 2007.

4 Sector-wise contribution to the Gross State Domestic Product in 2018-2019: Industry and manufacturing: 57.86 per cent, Services: 25.1, Agriculture: 10.84 percent. (Source: Government of Sikkim, 2019, State Finances Audit Report.)

5 While meat is considered a potent source of ritual impurity amongst Hindus (especially amongst the upper castes), beef is banned in most parts of India as the cow is considered a sacred animal in Hindu religious beliefs (see Chigateri, 2008; Parikh & Miller, 2019 on the complex politics around beef ban in India). However, beef is an important and regular part of the food culture in northeast India, including Sikkim.

6 Tourists not on package tours avail services of local travel agents to organise sight-seeing. However, during peak tourist season, it can be extremely difficult to make travel and accommodation arrangements and hence, package tours work out to be more economical and less stressful.

7 Tours are organised by private companies in collaboration with local travel agents, especially for transport. Travel companies usually negotiate directly with hotels for rates and bookings. Private tour operators offer curated packages, like ‘Be the Romeo to your Juliet in Sikkim’, ‘Women’s special Sikkim’, that combine tourist destinations in Sikkim and neighbouring Darjeeling district, in West Bengal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mona Chettri

Mona Chettri received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and has worked as a post-doc in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia. She is the co-editor of Development Zones in Asian Borderlands (2021, Amsterdam University Press) and the author of Constructing Democracy: Ethnicity and Democracy in the eastern Himalaya (2017, Amsterdam University Press). She is also the series editor of Eastern Himalaya Series (Rachna Books and Publications). She has published widely on borderlands, gender, development and politics in South Asia. Her current research focuses on the intersections between gender, labour, and infrastructure in the Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalaya, India and regional Australia.