Geography, record your suggestion or recommendation on how the tourism industry of India can be developed
Answers
What do toilets have to do with tourism? For the more than 7 million travellers who come to India each year, this is an important question.
After taking charge in May this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a nationwide “Clean India” campaign, personally wielding a broom to promote better sanitation.
Swinging the broom in the streets is doing more than improving hygiene in public spaces, it also spruces up the image of India. Visitors who are enchanted by the culture and cuisine of the country are simultaneously dismayed by its shabby streets and monuments.
In cleaning up India, Modi is trying to make sure the country is ready to welcome many more tourists. Despite its vast beaches, Himalayan peaks, dense forests and palatial hotels, India attracts only a tiny fraction of the world’s tourists – just over 0.5%. The new government wants a stratospheric surge in this number.
India is now preparing an electronic system that will make it easier for tourists to apply for visas online. Currently, tourists have to wait for days, often weeks. Tourism-friendly countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka have already benefited from a relaxation of visa rules, so India can see the advantage.
In a phased launch of the new regime, citizens in a dozen countries (soon to expand to 180) can apply online and collect their visas when they arrive in India, at 26 of country’s international airports.
India began the visa-on-arrival scheme in January 2010 for Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Singapore. In recent months this was extended to South Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos and Myanmar. Confidence has been boosted along with tourist arrival figures, which have doubled in only one year.