Found a link to a great Times Online story today through fellow Guardianista Benjy Lanyado’s new blog. It concerns Amitabh Kant, erstwhile joint secretary of India’s Ministry of Tourism, and “the fiendishly tricky art of ‘national branding’”. Under Kant’s seven year tenure India’s income from tourism had risen more than fivefold, to $11.6 billion.
Kant pioneered the well known Incredible India! marketing campaign, dissuaded gap-year students and British backpackers in favour of more “high-value” forms of tourism and also sold India to money-conscious Westerners as a destination where foreigners can access cheap medical care. His strategy fits well with the views of Edward Luce, author of the economic analysis In Spite of the Gods, who is grew increasingly dismayed at the endless, empty spiritual shorthand used to describe India when, in fact, it is so much more than that.
One of the most noticeable features of Kant’s campaign was the promotion of ‘rural tourism’, with whole poor villages’ livelihoods being turned around using nothing more than the abundant environmental, traditional and cultural pleasures already there (plus basic tourism ‘training’). As I travelled around India in 2008 I saw ‘homestays’ everywhere — and surely there is no better way to get to know a country than through sitting at the dinner table (or on the floor) of your host family, sharing food, language and culture with parents and children alike.
Note: I found Outlook Traveller (India) to be a fantastic magazine for finding out about ‘rural tourism’ (or, as General Jimmy Singh calls it, integrated villlage tourism) in India. It’s also rare amongst India publications in that its back issues are all available to read online.
Funnily enough, in the heavily touristed areas we visited like Kochin, Hampi and Jaipur, we met very few British ‘backpackers’, but hotel owners and other travellers all commented that they tried to avoid the holidaying young Israelis, who tended to go off the rails a bit with massive drug and alcohol consumption following their mandatory military service.
