For a quarter of a century, we have described Indian tourism as the sleeping giant. I fear that unless those who are in charge of this animal themselves wake up, this giant may occasionally turn over, groan or even flutter its eyelids, but will remain in its stupor. The reasons are not far to seek. How do two bureaucrats change a light bulb? One tries to fit it into the faucet while the other assures the public that everything is being done to bring the situation back to normal. This story pretty much epitomises the Department of Tourism’s approach. General Eisenhower used to say: “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” The Ministry of Tourism comes up with plans once every year, and twice in a leap year. But alas! They remain plans. Frivolities aside, let’s address the key issues that have prevented India from becoming a major tourism destination of the world.

The Ministry of Tourism is far from clear on what the government’s role in tourism is. Is it to build infrastructure? Is it to be the catalyst to encourage investment in tourism? Is it to market India as a tourist destination? Or is it to focus the attention of other concerned ministries and authorities on the economic potential of tourism and unleash the synergy of the combined efforts of all the limbs of the comatose body? Or is it all of these and more? Whatever it is, the government has failed.

The ITDC and the Hotel Corporation of India run some of the worst hotels on some of the most valuable real estate in India. The same hotels, run in the private sector, would probably earn twice the profit and generate more than twice the investible surplus to be used for expansion. In spite of periodic assurances, the government has not shown the will to privatise ITDC or HCI, except in a nominal fashion. They have disinvested some shares in ITDC in favour of the Taj group, which has itself generated a controversy. But that is another story.

If they define their role as that of a catalyst, it would be interesting to ask which new destinations they have opened up in the last ten years? If they feel that is best left to the private sector, what has the government done to make land available for hotels in Delhi and Bombay, the two ports of entry that are the worst bottlenecks. In fact, their contribution has been to convert a perfectly good hotel, The Akbar, into a government office.

If the role of the government is to focus the attention of other ministries on the economic potential of tourism, what are their achievements? Has the Ministry of Urban Development released sites in appropriate locations for hotels? Has the nodal ministry of the Department of Archaeology done anything to upgrade the maintenance of the most popular monuments and to upgrade basic facilities at these places of interest? Has the Ministry of Tourism been able to convince the government to exempt tourism projects from the application of the Urban Land Ceiling Act? They have come up with recommendations on fiscal incentives for the industry to encourage investment in tourism. Fiscal incentives are welcome. But will we ask ourselves whether investment is really the problem?

Tourism planning has been characterised by the ‘flavour of the month’ approach — which have swung from cultural tourism to beach tourism, from upper class tourism to youth tourism without taking any of these to its logical conclusion. If tourism is to succeed, there has to be a long term plan much like the New Industrial Policy, so that investors can plan with the security that tomorrow nobody will blow the whistle and change the rules of the game, either by imposing a luxury tax or prohibition, or stopping entry to the Taj Mahal on Mondays! You cannot run tourism, or for that matter any industry, like this.

In India, what the Centre proposes, the state often disposes, especially if the state is run off the list of state subjects and put on the Concurrent List. Every other day, a new committee submits its report on what needs to be done for tourism. The latest such committee was the one appointed by ASSOCHAM. Have they recommended anything that we have not known for 25 years?

Without making it sound simplistic, I would recommend the following panchseel principles for tourism.
1. Make available enough land at reasonable prices at all tourist destinations for construction of hotels — the most fundamental requirement for tourism. Ensure that the availability of lands keeps the average occupancy of hotels at no more than 65-70 per cent, so it never becomes a sellers’ market.
2. Create an autonomous national tourism body, run by professionals, with clear accountability for development and marketing. The operative phrases are ‘professionals’ and ‘clear accountability’.
3. Privatise ITDC and HCI and the government should stay out of tourism services.
4. Put tourism on the Concurrent List of subjects to encourage Centre-state co-operation.
5. Spread the awareness of the economic potential of tourism and unleash synergy between the states and various branches of the tourism industry.

If we only keep preparing plans with little or no intentions of implementing them, Rip Van Winkle will keep sleeping and the world will pass us by, as it almost did in trade and industry. And then we can all sleep for another forty years.

Nripjit Singh (Noni) Chawla

This article originally appeared in Business India - 04 November 1996