Tourism For India: A Potential Yet To Be Tapped In Full Measure

India has a world to offer to the rest of the world in terms of its vast variety of religions, culture, languages, ethnic stocks, hoary history, climatic diversity and its rich flora and fauna and yet the world outside is yet to “know” what India really is!

You see the footprints of history almost everywhere and more marked in such places as Delhi, Agra, Gwalior, Panipat, Patna, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa, Kolkata, Mumbai, Kochi and elsewhere. Here is the only place in the world where you can hear the prayers of the followers of different religions : Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Bahaism. Here is a land famous for its secular symphony : the invocations from the great temples in Varanasi, Tirupati, Srirangam, Guruvayur; the muezzin’s call to prayer from Jama Masjid-the great mosque built by Shah Jehan in Delhi; the chimes of the bells from churches in Goa and Kerala, the invisible Buddha under the Bodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya, the aweinspiring nude statue of Gomateswara at Sravanabelgola, the gurbani from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the pervading calm of the Lotus Temple in Delhi, the temples of Parsis in Mumbai and the nostalgia from the lone Jews’ synagogue in Cochin.

Indian art and architecture comes alive in Ajanta and Ellora, the Elephanta Caves, Konarak and Khajuraho, Mahabalipuram and the great temples of Madurai and Rameshwaram and the great paintings of Ravi Verma, Nandalal Bose and M.F. Hussain.

For scenic beauty, India has few parallels; militancy may have barred the tourists from exploring Kashmir, but they can still drink in the breathtaking charm of Kulu, Manali, Mussoorie, Ooty, Kodaikanal, the Kovalam Beach in Kerala, the Calangute and Colva beaches in Goa and the lakes and lagoons of Kerala.

And there are our great national parks and sanctuaries like Kaziranga, Gir, Corbett National Park, Thekkadi, Mudumalai, Ranthambor and the Silent Valley …

The tourist can choose the kind of “menu” he relishes best: a retreat from rat race and he can go to Kumarakom for a backwater cruise; a flair for adventure: he can go paragliding in Himachal Pradesh or go trekking or boatriding on the Ganga.

India may have everything a destination needs but it has less than half a percent share of the exploding world market of 700 million tourists, that is less than three million tourists. The Working Group on Tourism for the Ninth Plan set a target of 3.12 million foreign tourists for the year 2000 and 3.37 million for 2001. We cut a sorry figure before such small city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong who have relatively little to offer compared to India. Yet Hong Kong receives about 10 million tourists a year and Singapore 7 million.

And even with this trickle of a flow of foreign tourists, tourism has become the third biggest foreign exchange earner for India, fetching Rs. 14,400 crore a year (Textiles and IT being the first and second foreign exchange earners).

Most of the States have yet to realise their tourist potential and build up the requisite infrastructure and network of facilities that could attract foreign tourists. Region-wise Delhi attracts the largest number of foreign tourists because of its easy connectivity and its historical background. About 12.25 lakh tourists visited Delhi in 1999. Delhi is followed by Maharashtra, more particularly, Mumbai with a tourist arrival of 10.33 lakh the same year. Uttar Pradesh comes third, Tamil Nadu fourth and Rajasthan fifth. But should we be satisfied with peanuts when we have a lot to offer from all the States ?

India is trying to get countries like Singapore fully involved in the development of tourism. The Singapore Prime Minister has agreed to set up a working group on tourism to take a comprehensive look at the opportunities. Four specific areas of cooperation have been identified.
First, with its expertise on development of convention tourism, Singapore would be invited to help create better convention facilities in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Delhi. Singapore would provide a sort of consultancy services.
Secondly, the city state could help create a more vibrant leisure and entertainment tourism in some of the exotic places India could offer.
Third, there is a proposal to develop 21 institutes of hotel management and 16 food craft institutes.
And fourth and last; India can be proud of its 3600 heritage sites controlled by the Archaeological Survey of India. Singapore would be invited to take up landscaping, development of infrastructure and marketing of these historic sites.

Tourists visiting India may not be able to spend more than two or three weeks in India and it would be desirable to formulate ‘package’ tours for them programmes that help the visitors see the best of India in the shortest possible time covering as many places as possible. This would be,possible only if the places within the State and outside are well-connected. The Centre, in consultation with the States, has already identified 21 travel circuits and 12 destinations.

A lot depends on the States as to how well they can attract visitors from abroad. Kerala has bagged, for the second successive year, the National Award for the best performing State in Tourism Sector. The State witnessed a rise in foreign tourist arrivals or an average of 12 percent a year against the national average of one percent. The Award for the best maintained Tourism-friendly Project has gone to the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Chhattisgarh State. Kerala has opened to foreign tourists only during the last 15 years; a chartered flight arrives in Thiruvananthapuram every week from England for four months at a stretch taking the visitors on a package tour to different places of interest in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The Prime Minister’s holiday at the backwater resort of Kumarakom in the last week of December 2000 has opened up vistas of backwater tourism and cruise on houseboats on the lakes, lagoons and backwaters of Kerala. All of which shows that the States need to take the initiative. Haryana, which has no natural tourist endowments, has developed its own brand of “highway tourism” and created artificial facilities for weekenders. Bihar could provide the best circuit for tourists keen to visit places associated with Lord Buddha. In fact, a proposal came from Japan sometime ago to develop Bodh Gaya, Vaishali, Rajgir and other places. In August 2000, the Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation launched tourist flights from Bangalore to one of the World Heritage Sites, Hampi, the Capital of the 14th century Vijayanagar Empire. Karnataka is the first State to provide air taxi facility to promote tourism in the country on an organised basis. By air charter, the tourist can reach Hampi in an hour instead of 12 hours taken by normal car journey.

Indian Railways plays a significant role in the promotion of both inland and international tourism. Particular mention may be made of the five tourist trains operated by the Railway Ministry. These include the Palace on Wheels-touching Delhi, Jaipur, Udaipur, Jaisalmer, Bharatpur and Agra, the Fairy Queen (built in 1885)-running between Delhi and Alwar in Rajasthan, the Royal Orient – touching several historic places in Rajasthan and Gujarat, the Shivalik Deluxe between Kalka and Shimla and the Shivalik Palace tourist coach, also between Kalka and Shimla. Railways have plans to enlist the services of the private sector in starting more tourist circuits in different parts of the country.

However, in the effort to promote tourism by providing a mirror on indian culture and heritage for the foreign tourists, we should not allow tourism to destroy our valuable environment. This philosophy has given birth to the concept of eco-tourism. Let us not destroy the fragile ecosystem of our beaches, mountains and wild life sanctuaries in the name of tourism. In January 2001, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests notified the entire Mahabaleshwar plateau as an eco-sensitive zone. With this, Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani have become the first hill stations in this country to be protected from the ecological point of view. Such protection needs to be given to other hill stations, too, like Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh, Darjeeling, Dalhousie, Mussoorie, Shimla, Kurseong, Landsdowne, Kasauli, Munnar, Ooty and Kodaikanal.