Last year, Alcatraz Jail was ranked America’s top landmark

Was last year’s survey by a travel portal that ranked the defunct Alcatraz Jail as America’s top landmark — beating the Golden Gate Bridge, Lincoln Memorial and even the Statue of Liberty — the catalyst for Telangana’s new jail tourism initiative?
While quite a few other prisons around the world are iconic tourism magnets — from the Tower of London and the Cellular Jail in Andaman to Nelson Mandela’s prison at Robben Island — it is brave of Telangana to launch such a tourism offering in a country where most regard incarceration as the corollary of unfortunate career choices, not a holiday pastime.

Forking out Rs 500 to wear coarse prison clothes, eat watery gruel, clean the cell and sit all day behind old jail bars with just mosquitos for company would not be deemed an irresistible offer, especially given the all-day, air-conditioned temptations of malls.

Nevertheless, the enthusiastic officials who launched ‘Feel the Jail’ should investigate why no one has yet availed of the delights of Sangareddy District Central Jail built in 1796 by the Nizam of Hyderabad.

Maybe sponsored or compulsory tours should be organised for obvious target groups to increase footfalls. They should not think that just because no one apparently wants to go to jail even for a lark, the cautionary intention of the scheme has succeeded.