| Visit Bharat, courtesy UNDP, govt | |
| Vandana Gombar / New Delhi November 15, 2009, 0:48 IST | |
15 villages already on the traveller’s itinerary; 135 more on the way.
The Shaam-e-Sarhad village resort is a popular haunt for tourists who want to watch the sunset on the Kutch border in Gujarat. In the last season — which typically runs from October to March — the village hosted some 3,100 visitors, of which a third were from overseas.
There are at least 15 such villages which are already on the traveller’s itinerary because of a unique rural tourism initiative of the government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Another 135 villages are in the process of making themselves tourist-friendly by putting the basic infrastructure in place and imbibing the soft skills required to deal with visitors.
The first few village sites came up two years ago, though the National Tourism Policy highlighted the need to promote it back in 2002.
“It took us some time to identify the potential sites…and then work on them,” said UNDP’s national consultant for the Rural Tourism Project, Sudhir Sahi. “The takeaway for the visitors is not a piece of craft, but the experience. They get to touch the raw materials, sully their hands with the tools of the craft, sit face to face with the artisan and actually touch their lives.”
With over 600,000 villages dotting the country, the process of shortlisting was long and challenging.
Sahi said he worked on two parameters to select the first set of 36 villages spread across 20 states — they should be aligned with an existing tourist circuit (so that connectivity is not a challenge) and they should have some unique art and craft skills.
The Shaam-e-Sarhad resort, for instance, which is located in the Hodka Village, forms a part of the Mumbai-Bhuj-Rann of Kutch circuit. Similarly, Kumbalanghi and Aranmula in Kerala form parts of the backwaters-Munnar circuit, while Samode is a part of the Delhi-Jaipur-Agra circuit. The village of Pachampally is on the popular Hyderabad-Tirupati-Chennai circuit. Also, within the Incredible India campaign, a sub-brand of Explore Rural India (exploreruralindia.org) was created.
The villages had however never thought of tourism as a way of generating income and employment. They had to be hand-held through the process. “Tourism has not been at the forefront of people’s consciousness in villages,” said Leena Nanda, a joint secretary in the tourism ministry.
The results of the rural tourism initiative have been fairly impressive, with income flowing from the stay and the art & craft purchases made during the stay.
According to an impact study done by UNDP, the villagers saw a 50 per cent increase in income on average as a result of the tourism drive, with almost 14,000 persons benefiting directly. As for the visitors, they get a taste of rural India, where 70 per cent of the population resides.
The investment in each of these villages has been nominal — Rs 50 lakh for the infrastructure from the government and Rs 20 lakh from UNDP for the soft skills support for the 36 villages which form part of the first phase of the project. The village councils and NGOs in the area provided local support.
Since the villages can only cater to a limited number of people, the idea is to tap high-yield niche visitors. The travel industry is now being roped in for some serious marketing of the scheme.
The numbers will however be only a small fraction of the four to five million overseas visitors to India. “We don’t have a target number of visitors….but we expect a very good build-up of rural tourism,” said Nandan. The list of 150 villages, which have been identified, is also likely to be expanded.
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