World Tourism Day 2012 has a theme, “Tourism and Sustainable Energy: Powering Sustainable Development”. I wonder where the city of Lakes Udaipur stands in this cut-throat competition in the Tourism sector.

Apart from the lakes, which are moaning on their ill-fated situation, what are we to stand for? Plasters of our Heritage buildings are in tatters and the city is suffering from multiple dilemmas engulfed with mounting crime, unorganized city planning, uncontrollable traffic situation and multi-folded corruption.

Besides all these apathies, the development is just well graphed on papers; innovation is certainly alien to us.

This perfectly resembles a situation of a child growing into its teenage and the busy parents don’t know how to foster him better to make his future glorious.

One of the officially claimed parents of Udaipur is its Municipal Council, well known as Nagar Parishad.

It is responsible of many things including development and care of roads, sewerage, cleanliness, encroachments, many parks and gardens are also under its care. The building of the Municipal Council is always a place full of activity as lots of internal and external works are being conducted here every day. Hundreds of files, thousands of orders and a number of people get their work done in the council.

But the plague of apathy also lives here. This governing body is always seen claiming to be the only one who ‘naturally’ cares about Udaipur from various perspectives of development including cleanliness in the city areas which apparently draws tourists.

Pig roaming in the Municipal Council’s compound

However, its own compound is used as a pampas for stray animals. I don’t know how many tourists are really appreciative of the cleanliness in the city, but a few pigs definitely love to roam around the Municipal Council’s campus for their daily meals.

Keeping aside the theme of Sustainable Energy, Udaipur actually needs someone who can pump in Sustainable Positive Energy, Effective Leadership and apolitical Policies.

The narrow lanes of the old city areas are still flooded with gutter waste, stray animals and mounting garbage and after noticing how helpless our administration is, I don’t really blame them.

Rather I blame myself for this hypocrisy of getting proud of Udaipur every time whenever a stunning photograph of the lakes is uploaded online, mesmerizing me while I ignore the fact that the water of the lakes is already polluted with garbage.

I blame myself for sharing the victory of Udaipur after being awarded one of The Best Cities of the World by Travel and Leisure Magazine whereas the deceived fact is hidden deep down, somewhere under the files.

Today on World Tourism Day, I feel disheartened and shattered of the fact that the City of Lakes, which pulls millions of tourist every year is suffering from an incurable cancer of filthy politics and selfish governance.

Instead of celebrating World Tourism Day, every person whose bread and butter is coming from the tourism sector and in fact every Udaipur Citizen should come out and shout loud to those deaf ears of the administration or else Udaipur will sink one day in this sea of filth.