Dr Praney Slathia
The School of Hospitality and Tourism Management (SHTM) at the University of Jammu recently hosted a two-day national conference, “Tourism, Technology and Talent: Shaping Future-Ready Managers,” which I attended. The discussions were optimistic and wide-ranging, touching both success stories and pressing challenges. Yet, when the conversation turned to Jammu’s long-term tourism vision, one diagnosis became hard to miss: Jammu suffers from path dependence.
According to Paul A. David (1985), path dependence describes a process in which outcomes are strongly shaped by earlier events-sometimes even chance events-so that history “locks in” which options remain viable later. Jammu’s long-standing decision to operate primarily as a transit point for both Kashmir and Katra has, over time, cemented its identity as a transit hub. In practical terms, Jammu functions as a gateway node: tourist flows arrive here and then split into two onward routes-one toward Katra and the other toward Kashmir-because the city concentrates critical transport links, terminals, and transfer services that enable this branching movement.
The problem begins when a transit hub is mistaken for a tourism centre. Jammu has often been framed on the lines of Srinagar-expected to behave like a destination city in the same way. That assumption has narrowed opportunity. The railway has crossed the Trikuta barrier to Katra and pushed deeper connectivity toward the Valley. The ground reality has shifted, and Jammu must reimagine itself accordingly. This piece outlines the challenge-and plausible ways forward.
Prologue to the City of Temples
Jammu’s identity as a gateway is not new. Since the Indus Valley era, it has held strategic value as a corridor for goods and movement. It later sat along ancient trade routes such as the Uttarapatha, and eventually fell en route to wider trans-regional networks associated with the Silk Route. In the political economy of older times, Jammu’s stability mattered: it offered continuity in a landscape shaped by transit.
That civilizational flux also shaped its social imagination. The folklore of Jambu Lochan’s omen-of a tiger and a goat coexisting-captures an enduring local ethic: coexistence as an organic norm. A transit hub continuously absorbs people, influences, and movement; it learns to survive by accommodating difference.
In the post-independence era, Srinagar was envisioned as a modern tourist capital-and understandably so. Jammu, meanwhile, attempted to follow suit, but through a different axis: religious tourism. With Dharmarth Trust-led temple management shaping the city’s cultural topography, the title “City of Temples” came naturally. Add to this Jammu’s role as the principal gateway for the Vaishno Devi pilgrimage, and the religious-tourism strategy seemed not only logical but inevitable.
For decades, tourists and pilgrims arrived in Jammu, stayed a day or more, and then moved onward to Katra. The meta-resource behind this pattern was simple: connectivity.
But the map has changed. The train now reaches Katra, and the city’s traditional stopover role has thinned considerably. Yet Jammu still clings tightly to its older branding, even as the underlying mechanics have evolved.
What makes this moment unusually important is that transit hubs do not simply lose relevance-they either decay into bypassed towns or upgrade into gateways with purpose. Jammu is still the Valley’s logistical front porch, but it cannot rely on incidental footfall anymore. The new question is not “How do we stop tourists here?” but “What can only Jammu offer, before they move on?” That is where reinvention begins.
Recognising this shift, Jammu has tried to pivot into a gateway for offbeat destinations-Rajouri, Poonch, Doda, Kishtwar, Bhaderwah, and beyond. But one can argue that Jammu’s civic culture is still mid-transition: it has not fully “liberalised” in the values and offerings that attract wider leisure tourism. It cannot mimic Kashmir, and it cannot replicate the leisure ecosystem of places like Dehradun or Dharamsala. But it can build a distinct identity around what Kashmir cannot offer.
Neo-Tourism: Repositioning Jammu in the J&K Tourism Calculus
To define Jammu’s future, we must first locate its present role in the tourism calculus of J&K. The city’s function has shifted from being an essential stopover for the Katra-Kashmir corridor to being a node whose relevance must now be actively constructed.
Tourism is driven first by geography and culture. Secondary factors-transport, shopping, events-expand only when primary demand exists. Himachal is a useful example: geography gave it hills, and colonial-era leisure values helped embed a durable tourism culture that survived political change. Kerala offers another: branding (“God’s Own Country”) created a cohesive national image. Kashmir has long carried “Paradise on Earth.”
Jammu, however, has struggled to produce a message that captures its variety. “Amazing Jammu” is a slogan, but not yet a convincing narrative. At the same time, Jammu faces a religious-tourism path dependency: an old model that once worked well but now limits imagination. A meaningful pivot requires a unified political will. Yet Jammu’s politics is diverse and often divided-ideologically and ethnically. In such a landscape, civil society may need to do what it often does best: carry the baton first and push institutions to follow.
A Tourism Outlook for Jammu
First, if Jammu is to become a neo-transit node for offbeat destinations (Rajouri, Poonch, Doda, Kishtwar, and others), it must develop leisure zones without dismantling religious tourism. This requires clear zonation: religious tourism functions through religio-cultural codes; leisure tourism runs on liberal values, including freedom to dine, socialise, and celebrate. Without spatial and regulatory compartmentalisation, the two will repeatedly clash. The Master Plan-via JDA-may require targeted revisions to support such zoning.
Second, Jammu needs capital-and not just local capital. It must attract investors and operators who have successfully built adventure-cum-leisure ecosystems elsewhere (Kerala and Himachal are obvious examples). Moving away from path dependence requires the state to take calculated risks and absorb early friction as new systems form.
Third, civil society must hold two truths together: Jammu’s religio-cultural foundation and its potential for liberal leisure tourism. The city’s undertone is diversity-cultures, ethnicities, values, traditions-and that diversity is an asset if designed into a tourism ecosystem. Like any ecosystem, diversity increases resilience.
Fourth, infrastructure must be built with hazard realism. Jammu is in an active earthquake zone, and recent weather volatility-monsoon overlaps and abrupt western disturbances-has exposed fragility. Every brick laid must respect hazard sensitivity, not treat it as an afterthought.
Fifth, Jammu must extend its strongest intangible asset-people and harmony-beyond comforting rhetoric. “Khand mithe log Dogre” is a sentiment; it must translate into an actual tourism posture: welcoming, organised, and confident. The city’s taaseer can become the anchor for a renewed gateway identity-this time, a gateway not only to pilgrimage, but to adventure, leisure, and discovery.
Mark Twain is often credited with saying, “History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” Jammu cannot return to an older tourism reality-but it can create a new rhyme: a rebranding that embraces its historic gateway role while reimagining what that gateway leads to. In doing so, Jammu can embolden its niche in North India’s socio-economy-not as a forgotten stopover, but as a deliberate beginning.
(The author, a JKAS Officer, is Accounts Officer, SMDA Mansar, Dept. of Tourism)
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