Barun Roy: The Taj can go to sleep

ASIA FILE

If love of the exotic and the weird were really the big tourist pullers that many suggest it is, India should have been swamped by foreign tourists because it's both exotic and weird, and eminently so.

It has cities that look like villages, villages that look like cave dwellings, highways that are meant for bullock carts, tourist lodges that imitate fourth-grade employee quarters, shanties in every available open space, a mini temple under every gnarled banyan tree, and crowds, crowds, crowds everywhere, swirling, seething, spilling over, hanging around, begging, or simply gawking, and never leaving a tourist alone.

If ancient monuments alone were good enough "" the Taj by moonlight, the caves of Ajanta and Ellora, or the Sun Temple of Konarak "" then, too, India should have been up there as a major tourist country.

Eco-tourism? We have the Himalayas, Kaziranga and the Sunderbans. Good beaches? There's Kovalam and there's Goa. History? We are steeped in it.

Rites and festivals? We have any number of them every day of the year and had them for thousands of years. Yet we don't have the tourists in the numbers that would make us respectable.

We know the reasons why. We don't have even the simplest things that tourists expect "" roads that won't shake up the bones, rooms that have fresh linen and clean toilets, restaurants that are free of flies and mosquitoes, water that's safe to use, guides who are not hustlers, directions that are clear and helpful, tourist offices that have the necessary information.

But these things alone don't bother tourists. They want much more than simple creature comforts. They expect to feel wanted.

Their preference is for places where systems work, schedules are honoured, and where they won't feel like visitors from Mars, and will be free to roam around and explore and not be explored themselves, or quizzed or followed or nagged or subjected to all kinds of spoken or unspoken curiosities and suspicions with which we often treat foreigners.

They travel to enjoy, not to suffer hardships and harassment. Johnny Walker Black Label at duty-free shops isn't important at all, but a happy, unencumbered vacation is.

That's why so many tourists go to south-east and east Asia and so few come to India. When they visit Malaysia or Singapore or Hong Kong or China, they experience the modern and the new, order and efficiency, neat roads and beautiful buildings, glamour and glitz, happy people and manicured spaces, something they can easily relate to.

These are countries in change, constantly dressing up to look smart and fresh, never standing still and always renewing themselves as they journey towards the future.

They never allow their past to overshadow their present, and tourists love that.

When they come to India, what do tourists see? Airports gloomy, disheartening, and nondescript; cities dusty and dishevelled, smoky and grimy, old and decrepit, crowded and chaotic, with broken pavements and dug-up streets swarming with people and vehicles, of all types and speeds that ever moved on wheels, like ants released from their hills; services that are unreliable and very basic and often unavailable when they are needed most; and generally a country that gives the impression of being eternally shackled to the ruins and monuments from its past, a country full of mysteries, contradictions, confusions, and loose ends.

For most tourists, India is a scare, a kind of wilderness where one is always at a loss, never at home. It's full of uncertainties, ambiguities, half-truths, hazards, exploiters, and people too clever by half.

Stories of tourists being harassed, stalked, even raped, and treated with suspicion are far too many for anybody's comfort, and stories like these have a way of travelling that can't be easily stopped.

This is what we must understand, and reform. The Asia that exists beyond the borders of our sub-continent is changing furiously, becoming, with each passing year, lovelier to look at and be in.

The Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Esplanade in Singapore, the skyline in Hong Kong, the Taipei 101, and the Maglev train in Shanghai present a face of Asia that's modern, refreshing and attractive.

It's an Asia where the systems are in place, societies are orderly and people are disciplined.

India's physical face is wrinkled and shrunken. No new-age landmarks lend it novelty and freshness.

We have the worst infrastructure, the worst looks, unchanged for centuries, and, above all, the worst attitudes; yet we expect tourists to pour in and meekly accept what we have to offer, like our own people do.

But foreign tourists aren't volunteers on a mission, ready to make sacrifices. They are naturally drawn to places that give good value for money. Come September, Asia's second Disneyland will be opening for business in Hong Kong. The Taj can go to sleep.