MANY nations survive on tourism. But for years we have missed the bus. Now, there is hope. Agencies after studying the tourism issue submitted detailed notes to the Union government on improving the tourism potential. Let us have look at the details which include the problem areas.
Medical Tourism: Befitting our size, India offers an amazing variety of medical tourism sites which should bring millions here. Every state offers its own brand of medical tourism. The number of cases steadily go up from thousands to lakhs, new diseases crop up, medical admissions shoot up. All these can raise the number of medical tourists to record levels. Let us illustrate. Which metropolis gets affiliated with so many epidemics year after year, season after season. Mumbai this year reported sharp rise in malaria cases, dengue and higher immunity of mosquitos to DDT and other drugs. More areas, more building sites, more flats mean more cases of malaria and dengue. The world was amazed at the increased opportunities for doctors, medical students, adulterated drugs and so on. No wonder, the scope for medical tourism shot up. By the way, Mumbai, we are told, secured the highest number of rat bites and BMC’s rat killer squads eliminated a record number of rodents, more than the Vietnamese killed by United States Marines in the Vietnam war!
Border Tourism: Another spectacular increase in tourism. We do not know if this was due to the swearing in of a new government. Formerly, border tourism was calculated on the basis of protest notes sent by GOI to Pakistan government on the border incidents. Today, this has diversified with the ‘enemy’ diversifying his strategy. Over and above protest notes, the government spread more awareness on the topic creating more patriotic movies, songs, TV shows and so on. The process will get a further fillip once Gajendra Chouhan, the famous ‘Yudhishtir’ of Mahabharat serial fame is sworn in as the head of the FTII (Film and Television Institute of India). He will concentrate in the border areas and develop border tourism, with or without his four brothers, noble wife and mother.
Rural Tourism: This is a god’s gift for the overall development of India. With never-ending drought, rural population declined drastically. This is exactly what the government and its Ministry of Tourism wanted. More and more Indian rural population is migrating to the cities. Foreign tourists who had all along been inspired by classic rural-based films on Indian poverty like Pather Panchali, Mother India, and Do Bigha Zaemeen, are now enthralled by new waves of rural cinema with mini-skirted extras flirting around with no Manoj Kumar to control them. The new wave rural cinema is a major attraction in popularising rural tourism.
Heritage Tourism: Time and again we are told of the rich cultural tourism in India which attracts millions of visitors to the country. Forget Mohen-je-daro or Harappa, today there are hundreds of more new tourism sites which are appreciated the world over. These are due to the ingenuity of the Indian mind – its builders, contractors, planners and so on. We don’t know how old Taj Mahal is. But today our genius builders can construct brand new Taj Mahals
which develop crack in five or six years because of the use of adulterated cement, malignant marble and so on. But this becomes a boon for our tourism industry by displaying a new brand of ‘heritage culture’. The ‘redeveloped Taj’, the redeveloped 100-storeyed Leaning Tower of Pisa
restaurant (copyrighted from the Italian original) located at Gandhinagar are exåmples. Included as heritage samples are heroes displayed in statue forms –Shivaji (43), Gandhi (102), Bal Thackeray (87) and so on. HeritageTourism in India has one hazard. The space is so overcrowded with Na Mo statues (we lost count) that foreign visitors stumble and fall down frequently. But a special grant of Rs 500 crores will soon solve this problem.
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V. Gangadhar.
The writer is a well-known satirist.[/column]