Tourism Standing Committee Chairman Snubs China Comparison

ET&T Staff - Mumbai

With India being often compared with China when it comes to emerging markets in most areas, including tourism, it is time for those comparison makers to take a look at the political system of both the countries.

According to Nilotpal Basu, chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on transport, tourism and culture, the comparison is more of a mechanical kind. He said, "I have often heard references made to China when it comes to tourism and our far depleted performance in front of them. I think we should first consider the political system of both the countries, which is completely different. We have to see if we can leverage where our strength lies, which is our vibrant political system where there are multiple political parties and a more democratic process of decision making."

He stressed on evolving a mechanism within the decision-making process, so as to get to a consensus. "It is right to have fierce debates on policy making in the country and the existence of parliamentary standing committee is a great contribution to the decision-making process in the country. We can compare ourselves to China, but while they try to leverage on their strengths in terms of governance, we have to do the same. Comparison of mere mechanism of the two countries cannot help," he said.

Another issue which he took up recently was that of ownership with the public sector-owned airlines - Air India and Indian Airlines. He said that the problem was not with ownership but with how much the public sector carriers are being allowed to work by the government. "There are many successful airlines in the southeastern region, which are government-owned carriers. But there is a difference in the manner in which, say Singapore Airlines functions and the way Air-India or Indian Airlines is allowed to function. So the problem is not in the character of ownership but in the manner of functional autonomy that is accorded to our government companies. I hope, there is a merger of these two airlines to create an even playing field for public sector airlines companies vis-à-vis private sector companies that have been allowed to fly both international and domestic flights," he said.

Another major area which Basu touched upon was the integrated transport policy when it comes to low cost carriers, which has often been targeted by the industry as being insufficient. He said, "We are not missing an integrated transport policy. We should not look at a segment of aviation becoming a competitor to other modes of transport. While we may have ideas, we cannot address the kind of issues we are being faced with unless we can bring all the components of all the modes of transportation together into a smooth and seamless integrated network. So, aviation has to be seen in a larger perspective."