TOURISM
I will introduce this topic with our experience in Bangkok, Thailand during my family's visit to this capital city a few years ago. We flew in from Malaysia on the last leg of our summer vacation. As soon as we exited the customs area we were greeted by a young man in a suit and sporting their tourism board's badge. He politely enquired if we had already made arrangements for our tour. When we said "no", he took us to a booth to get arrangements done for this, then to the foreign exchange counter, then called a taxi and when we were on our way to our hotel, he left us. The next morning a woman from the tour company came to our hotel promptly at 8.00 AM and on with our tour. What followed on that day and the rest of our tour was a true eye opener for me. Thailand has made a fantastic tourism industry around the Buddha and, would you believe, the Hindu deity, Rama! And here we were, visiting all those temples and spending our dollars on collectibles! I think the Indian tourism department's officials should take a tour of Thailand and take home some ideas!
What a contrast this (over) exploitation of our themes in Thailand makes with the several visits to India our family had made over the years! The potential of tourism as an industry is a vastly under-estimated and under-utilized natural resource of India. Not only is India blessed with abundance of natural beauty and culture but, along with Iraq, China and Egypt, it happens to have one of the oldest continuous civilizations in the world. What this means is that it is a treasure-trove of historical places to visit and monuments to savor. The historical relics from the colonial past, Mogul architecture and monuments and the innumerable Hindu temples are just a sampling of the places of potential interest to students of history from all over the world.
Important but little utilized are the places considered sacred for the Buddhists all over the world, particularly the Orient. This is especially relevant in the coming decades of economic ascendancy of the Pacific rim nations. One needs to look no farther than the flow of pilgrims into Saudi Arabia to visit Mecca and Medina during the holy season to realize the enormous potential of flow of Buddhists from the orient. Remember, the population we are talking about is no fewer than a quarter of the population of the world! And the flow pilgrims will not be limited to a season of the year. If the politico-economic union I described earlier materializes, we have relics such as Mohan Jo Daro and Harappa, (currently in Pakistan, but two of the earliest planned cities in the world) and Taxila ("Taksha-Sila), the great center of Budhist and Hindu culture and commerce of antiquity, also in Pakistan and the multitude of Buddhist temples in Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
Now, if you add the wide variety of landscape, ranging from temperate Kashmir to balmy tropics of the west coast and the arid central plains to the mangroves of the Bengal delta, another major natural resource to be exploited is evident. India has one of the longest coastlines in the world and it is absolutely inexplicable not only that this aspect has not been highlighted in travel information put out by the government of India, but also that the beaches have not been developed with this end in mind. It does not take a great deal of development effort to make much of the coastline havens for tourists. The only drawback I see is that the country is far from the populace seeking sunny destinations (mainly the Europeans), but the beaches should be offered as a plus and not as the only attraction.
Another major attraction for tourists is the wide variety of wildlife. Indeed, India boasts some of the largest collections of wild animals in the world. A small example would be lions, elephants, tigers, rhinos, leopards, deer, monkeys and many more animals, some of them unique to India. Just as with Buddhist pilgrimage, our effort should be focused on promoting this special blessing of our country to the newly affluent peoples of the Orient, especially the Japanese, Koreans and the Chinese. The main selling point is this country is closer than Africa. Add to it the lure of visiting Buddha's birth place and of his "Samadhi", it would not require a great deal of persuasion for these people to grab the opportunity.
Last, but not the least, is creating several 'free ports' in strategic spots along the coast. Examples may be Mumbai, Goa, Kochi, Chennai, Kolkata (of course, many more may be considered). In these places goods should be available to tourists duty-free. This will not only enhance the tourists' package, it will surely bring some visitors from neighboring countries simply to make large purchases at bargain prices. Imagine the flow foreign currency this would bring! A major impact this might have is the exposure of Indian-made good to the rest of the world. Of course, we should make available, products from competing countries as well.
Vital to a thriving tourism industry is the provision of excellent accommodations and transportation. When it comes to a major industry, it will be self-sustaining and perhaps generate the revenue for the government for building adequate infrastructure. Until this happens, my recommendation is that the government (central, state and local) bear the expenses of providing both clean, inexpensive, basic but world-class accommodations and adequate access by road, waterways and air. This may not necessarily mean build a whole array of new hotels and roads. Quite to the contrary! Peppered all over the country are government-owned 'rest houses'. These can be upgraded by providing hot and cold water, potable water, bottled or canned foods, safe foods at the premises, bath/shower and clean (tiled floors and walls) bathrooms and toilets. The importance of the cleanliness in promoting tourism cannot be over-emphasized!
If the principles set out in the foregoing paragraphs are followed, I cannot see how tourism will fail to flourish in India. Of course, an extremely important part of this campaign will be aggressive advertising through pamphlets, brochures, TV/radio and magazine advertising all over the world and especially the orient, Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. Remember to inform the would-be visitors about the cleanliness of the accommodations and the safety of both the water and the food. Lately, some interesting adverts have appeared on TV, under the banner "Incredible India"; these show images of parts of Indian life. However, enough emphasis has not been given to Buddhism, to the Hindu temples and other relics or any mention of the adequacy of the accommodations that are available in most of the popular destinations in India. Also, there is not a hint of all the contributions we Indians had made to the world culture in fields as diverse as mathematics, astronomy, literature, philosophy, theology and science or the fact that India is the birthplace of democracy,and that Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-European languages is ever made. In other words, we should be shouting out that India is the birthplace of all civilization and much of the cultures in the Middle East and Greece, Rome and Egypt owe a great deal to we Indians. It is hightime we blow our horns a little!.