Indian Tourism and its Infrastructural status

 

The buzzword today in India is Tourism. Ever since our beloved PM visited Lakshadweep and did snorkelling, social media is going ga-ga over this. It went so viral that it almost exposed the bitterness between the two countries in open. A few political leaders of the island nation suspected that PM Modi's promotion of Lakshadweep was an attempt to project the Union Territory as an alternative tourist destination or a “competition" to the Maldives. The immediate reaction from the junior Ministers of the Maldives ruling Government made things worse. None had mentioned Maldives when Lakshadweep trip was posted. However, the nationalism fever that gripped India and the hype created by the media and social media, things went into a turmoil.

Whether one accepts it or not, Maldives is a pretty small nation compared to India. Maldives thrive on support from other countries. Although it is inclined towards China, India always stood first in supporting them be it was the water-crisis few years ago or training on defence. Their main revenue is Tourism and Indian tourists contribute around 12% of their total revenue. The bilateral trade volume between these two countries touched $500 milllion in 2022 and would have crossed more in 2023. They cannot simply let that go! 

The Earth is flat today. Self-sufficiency is good however, when the coutnry is small and the resources are limited, one has to look for a win-win situation. From time and again, this new Govt of Maldives tried to snub India in open and it will not take time for India to reciprocate. The damage to India will be nothing relative to the damage Maldives will be facing. Aligning with China will only worsen their situation. They have to learn this from the history of Sri Lanka and Pakistan. 

Indians should accept/ understand a factor. India does not attract the global tourists as many other countries do. Our Govt is not at fault. It is us, the people who are at fault. We do not keep our country clean. We do not behave well with tourists. Let us analyze this. 

At the outset, we do not have toilets, let alone clean-toilets on any of our highways. Be it Shimla or Sikkim or Wayanad or Gokarna... Parking lots for tourist cars/ vans is almost next to impossible to find. Munnar is one such illustration. Try the houseboats in Alapuzha (Allepey) and see how dirty the sea is! Worse is, signages on our roads - the language tussle by the so-called language-patrons complicate the issue for a visitor! Visual signages are totally absent. Tourist Guides - difficult to get a qualitative one. Why cant we use technology? Use pre-recorded narrations and provide the earphone to every visitor and choose the channel where they are seeing - Standardised information sharing and also quality information? The concept of community-based tourism infrastructure is unknown to India. Not to mention the poor quality and capacity of air, road, rail and water access and connectivity infrastructure etc., Not only they are of poor quality they are also highly unreliable. 

Less we talked about Indian hotels are better. One is not sure who awards them Star category and on what basis! The staff are not courteous, the location is lousy, the amenities are only on paper, the response time is bad and internet is always there for the namesake. All of these are about hotels in Tier 1 cities. Imagine the plight in remote tourist spots! 

National Integrated Database of Hospitality Industry (NIDHI) is a portal for registration of accommodation units in the country. Prior to this, Ministry of Tourism had only 1400 hotel registrations but now over 40,000 hotels have registered on the NIDHI portal. The portal provides a number of benefits like Star Classification for hospitality units, project approvals for accommodation units, listing of hotels on IRCTC hotel booking portal and information about capacity building workshops and conferences. To also assist the hospitality industry in their preparedness to continue operations safely and mitigate risks arising out of the pandemic, Ministry of Tourism has partnered with the Quality Council of India (QCI) and launched a new initiative, that is, SAATHI (System for Assessment, Awareness and Training for Hospitality Industry). The idea is to sensitize the industry on the COVID regulations by the government and instill confidence amongst the staff and guests that a particular hospitality unit has exhibited intent towards ensuring safety and hygiene. Self-Certification regarding adherence to SAATHI framework, capacity building and Third party assessment are three main elements of this initiative. The SAATHI dashboard provides information on number of self-certified hospitality units across the country.

Constraints in India becoming globally competitive tourism destination are inadequate tourism infrastructure and weak institutional support frameworks. Even though the tourism ministry has taken several key initiatives to improve tourism infrastructure such as increasing the capacity of tourist superstructure facilities, especially hotels and convention facilities, public infrastructure continues to be largely poor.

Tourism is the fastest growing industry in the world in terms of employment and revenue. Investment in infrastructure acts as a catalyst for improving economies. While investment in roads, ports, airports and urban amenities have a cascading effect creating the virtuous cycle of stimulating demand, production, employment, consumption surplus and more demand, the impact is the quickest and most spread out through investment in tourism infrastructure.

While we are going ga-ga over Lakshadweep and cancelling Maldives, Let us behave as good nationals to keep the Nation Clean first. Modi can announce Swacch Bharat but we have to keep it clean - meaning prevent from littering. Then, demand the Govt to create the requisite infrastructure. Time has come now.