Role of Local Community in Heritage Management for Sustainable Cultural Tourism Development: A Study on Lalbagh Region, Murshidabad, West Bengal

In recent times, a growing movement has been observed on the involvement of local community for the conservation of heritages with an aim of sustainable use of natural and cultural resources. Social science research on community participation in any kind of development has been conducted in several fields and tourism discipline is also not an exception. Generally, community can engage in tourism business directly through having some control i.e. in planning & management and/or providing services to the tourists. Host regions and available cultural resources both are used and respected by local community as well as tourists, whose primary goal is tourism development retaining the cultural sustainability. Moreover, cultural tourism development would not be able to achieve its success unless the host community contributes in development process in any way. In this connection, the Lalbagh region in Murshidabad, West Bengal possesses a large number of cultural heritage resources which give a tremendous opportunity for cultural heritage tourism development. This paper aims to examine the level of participation of community in heritage conservation, role of local people in sustainable cultural heritage tourism development and also study the perceived participation benefits on the development of cultural tourism. A mixed methodology (both qualitative and quantitative) has been used in this study, based on the primary and secondary data collected. The study concludes that heritage resources in Lalbagh are well maintained but the role of community is marginalized. Hence this study can be a vital proposition to commence an initiative for the communities to vigorously contribute in heritage resources conservation for sustainable cultural tourism development.