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pitches for rural tourism
New Delhi: Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni on Tuesday underlined the need for introducing fresh strategies to ensure the sustainable development of rural areas in the country, saying such efforts could help to enhance the viability of rural tourism. Inaugurating a day-long workshop on rural tourism here today, Soni said that it is the concept which has a focus at the local level and has tremendous potential for building links with local communities and achieving a superior quality of life for India's rural population. "Over the years, industrialization and development has become increasingly urban-centric creating a lot of pressure on civic amenities in urban areas, thus giving rise to urban slums, increasing crimes and ever growing unemployment. Our rural areas are suffering from the problem of falling income levels and lesser job opportunities," Soni said, adding that "it is with this view that the Government has launched a massive `Bharat Nirman Yojna' so as to make our villages more attractive and livable by providing livelihood to people in their own natural environment."
India, she said, has the cultural richness and variety, which few countries in the world possess. "Indian tourism product is now reckoned among the world's top- most unique visitor experiences. This creates a major opportunity to position the Indian tourism product as a unique visitor experience in rural, low-impact settings. Rising interest in heritage and culture, improved accessibility and environmental consciousness has helped popularising rural tourism," Soni added. Soni said that local communities living in the vicinity of tourism circuits can share in the benefits from tourist expenditure by participating in the preservation of assets on which tourism is dependent. Local communities can also contribute immensely in creating awareness about and the preservation of the historical or cultural significance of the archaeological, religious, wildlife, bio-diversity and ethnic wealth close to them. However, she cautioned that to make this possible, "we have to face some cultural shocks - piles of garbage near heritage monuments, clogged drains etc. Our top priority should be to provide the tourists a clean environment, a clean room, a clean toilet, clean food and of course, clean water." "The Rural Tourism project, which has been launched in cooperation with the UNDP, seeks to provide these conditions in our rural areas and it is heartening to note that the project has also greatly helped in elevating the life style of the people living in the vicinity of the project areas," she added.
Tourism Secretary A.K. Mishra underlined the need of setting up benchmarks
to monitor the progress of rural tourism projects. Jerome Sauvage, the
Deputy Resident Representative of the UNDP, underlined the need for monitoring
the impact that the rural tourism may cause on the lives of women in the
concerned areas. Tourism secretaries of various State Governments, Collectors/District
Magistrates of the project areas and representatives of non-governmental
organisations from different parts of the country are participating in
the day-long workshop.
-June 6, 2006
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