By Maitphang Syiem

"People come here for crystal-clear water; when it is polluted, they simply don't come." The statement made by a well-known entrepreneur is quite intriguing and undeniably has a very profound message for all of us.

Looking deeper into it with analytical lenses and breaking into different components, there is something which we all need to pay collective attention to because in it lies what we are really proud of and which is also factually describable. Yes, dear readers, it's our scenic beauty which is still holding, driving, sustaining and engaging us in different ways. At this moment take your time and think of it. Having said that, there is an impending matter which should be hypothetically asked. What if is not Instagrammable anymore? What kind of scenario could prop up? This is something which requires us to have a wide spectrum of understanding.
If one could recollect, there is a photograph that has been shared over a million times picturising a wooden boat floating in mid-air above a riverbed of smooth stones with no water visible, just sky silence, and a kind of magic that seems too clean to be real, the photograph of Dawki, Shnongpdeng, Umngot river and commenting on that photograph more than any public campaign has brought in a flood of visitors then. But in late 2025 the river turned murky due to the silt cascading into the tributaries which emanated from the construction activities and post that event, there was a Domino Effect, one event affecting another. In plain words - one season of earning dropped by 80% leading to economic collapse at the community level immediately.
Well, the aftermath is not a warning; it already happened and in that muddy river lies the most honest answer to the aforementioned question which we have been reluctant to ask: what if things we hold dearly are not Instagrammable anymore?
Research papers tell us what we already feel, and that social media influence is the single highest factor driving tourism in our state today; not word of mouth, not travel magazines but Instagram, a geo-tagged photograph, Insta reels, time-lapse video and many more such social media productions. If we can recollect once again Meghalaya was the only Indian destination listed among the world's top ten by Skyscanner with 828 % surge in global flight searches. Sixteen Lakh tourists arrived in 2024 which is a record, probably a triumph by every public metric. Now at this juncture take a moment to ask - What exactly are all those tourists coming to see? The probable answer is the same perhaps in every language every age group, every budget tier. They are coming to see nature, the water, the clouds, not infrastructure, not the highways and public centres. They travel here to do an Insta click with the living root bridges which took hundreds of years to grow. They come to see the clear waters; to see the caves ancient enough to name a geological age; to visit the sacred forests that we protected with cultural prohibitions when there were no laws in the olden days.
This is a strong reminder that Ecology is a tourism product; it is not a backdrop; it is not an amenity but the entire reason why our home is on the global map. In the context of Meghalaya, we may sometimes become overwhelmed with the notion that tourism is development while the ecology is a constraint. However the ground reality is an inverse of that notion. This emphasizes that our special Ecosystem is the core product itself in Meghalaya's Tourism industry and the only fundamental attraction that draws visitors to the state rather than the infrastructure or anything else. The 'Niche' is the product and the infrastructure serves this 'Niche' and should not replace it.
Now coming to another part is a question to ask - What are we quietly erasing? If one looks into many papers which have been thoroughly studied, we can have many things which we are consciously or unconsciously erasing - slowly perhaps because of our unbecoming attitude propelled by anthropogenic greed which have manifested in the rivers, the forests and all the natural entities quietly being erased. The irony exists both statistically and ecologically. The more Instagrammable places becomes (curated digital content), the more tourists arrive, and with more tourists, more infrastructure is built and the more infrastructure built in haphazard and unplanned manner the less Instagrammable the landscape becomes. This may sound like a paradox but it is something which can only be resolved by governing the relationship between Tourism Demand and Ecological Supply.
On the other hand, as discussed from time to time is the carrying capacity of Meghalaya. Let us look at the case of Thailand for a better picture. The Maya Bay which is the most photographed beach in Asia after was closed down after its coral health collapsed from 70% to less than 8 % due to unsustainable tourist pressure. It took three years of closure, active restoration and strict visitor limits to begin recovery. We understand that there are commitments in expanding activities in the areas concerned with the thriving tourism industry and none of this is wrong in itself. Infrastructure is necessary, employment is necessary, economic growth is necessary but we should also reckon with the fact that every road that cuts a hillside; every construction site that dumps soil into a tributary; every resort that clears a forest edge is not just an environmental footnote; it is a withdrawal from the only bank account Meghalaya's tourism economy actually runs on which is its ecological integrity. When that account empties, there is no bailout. There is no reforestation timeline that restores a 500-year-old root bridge. There is no public scheme that can return an endemic cave species. There is no mechanism that brings back a river's clarity once the spring-shed that fed it is gone.
In the context of Meghalaya a logical and analytical look would inform that tourism is built on ecological integrity. It is the only tourism that endures and ecological integrity, once lost, does not return on the timescale of a tourism cycle or even a human lifetime.
What does Meghalaya look like when the rivers that made it famous run murky year-round? What does it look like when the living root-bridges, which take decades to grow, begin to fail from soil compaction and root stress? What does it look like when the caves that named a geological age are emptied of their endemic species? What does it look like when Mawlynnong is no longer cleanest; when Sohra no longer has water; when the sacred groves are homestay clusters? There will come a morning perhaps sooner than we think when a traveller opens Instagram and searches for the iconic places but finds only archived photograph of the crystal river, the misty bridge, the floating boats and beneath the nostalgia of those images, the most important question will not be - why did no one photograph it while it lasted, but it will be why did no one protect it while it was still there. Will we also remember that it was once Instagrammable? Or will we finally understand that some places are not meant to be photographed; they are meant to be protected, so that what cannot be filtered, cannot be retouched, and cannot be re-grown in our lifetime and survives beyond the reach of the next viral post?
(The author is a Geospatial Expert)