Cover Story

Tying up the ‘North’

Though North India is endowed with tremendous potential and is undoubtedly India's ace of spades in the global tourism game, its states are still dancing solo instead of tapping their foot in collective synchrony like their counterparts in South and North East India. Jyoti Koul investigates whether the growing focus of PHDCCI and CII in the region will teach the states to dance in synchrony

It is no mystery that as individuals, the performance of the North Indian states in tourism has been phenomenal. After all, 60 per cent of total tourist figures in the country are attributed to states within the northern region, as indicated by the recent Ministry of Tourism reports.

But, in keeping with a fast paced global industry as well as growing competition from within the Indian market itself, travel trade gurus predict that the future lies in a unified approach if growth in tourism is the prime agenda for any region. This, however, exists only in certain cases in North India like the Delhi-Punjab joint tourism promotion and marketing campaigns.

While the South Indian states have made an effort to unite under the aegis of South Indian Tourism Committee (SITCOM) and the North East states have come together with support from the Central government, this unified stance is missing in the tourism agendas in northern India. This, many feel, might spell inevitable failure for North India's tourism industry's and lead to the emergence of new and dynamic states that would capture a sizeable chunk of the Indian tourism market. Till today, the 'Integrated Tourism Development Committee' for the region has been an idea that was mooted, penned down but not swung in action.

Gifted yet drifted

Let's take a sneak peek into the tourism potential of each northern state and its individual tourism agendas:

Delhi

The state government is currently focussing on promoting the capital as a long-haul destination, while also concentrating on highlighting its heritage tourism, sports, adventure and health tourism. In a bid to further strengthen its initiatives it has set up coordination committees with other states such as Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh

The state government's key focus areas are cultural and heritage tourism, wildlife tourism, eco-tourism and pilgrim tourism.

Uttar Pradesh

The state has within its domain identified seven tourism circuits - the Buddhist circuit, the Bundelkhand circuit, Vindhyachal circuit, Braj circuit, Avadh circuit, cruise circuit, wildlife and eco-tourism circuit as its focus. It also aggressively markets and promotes its wildlife tourism, and river tourism products.

Haryana

The key agenda of Haryana Tourism in the past couple of years has been to focus on promoting farm tourism, highway tourism, thematic development of its existing tourism related properties, adventure theme park and more recently Bollywood tourism collectively with Punjab and Chandigarh.

Jammu & Kashmir

After a long hiatus, Jammu & Kashmir is slowly but surely surging ahead with its tourism agenda, mainly its focus on eco-tourism, pilgrim tourism and sports tourism. It has recently inked a joint tourism promotion agreement with Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC).

Chhattisgarh

Endowed with rich cultural heritage, this state is keenly promoting its eco-tourism, adventure tourism, spiritual tourism, heritage and tribal tourism. Its progressive tourism policy is aimed at capitalising on its 'New State Advantage'.

Uttaranchal

Right from its inception, the government had identified tourism as its prime sector. Adventure tourism, eco-tourism, sports tourism, heritage tourism are its mainstays.

Himachal Pradesh

The state's tourism policy employs the following strategies that focuses on breaking the seasonality factor of its tourist arrivals and spreading tourism concentration to new areas. Its main focus is adventure and sports tourism, rural tourism, heritage and cultural tourism and entertainment tourism.

Punjab

The Punjab government has identified tourism as the third most important sector after agriculture and manufacturing. It has assured to boost tourism as one of its revenue earners in future and has invited private sector participation. The state has also decided to make Punjab a preferred tourist destination in active cooperation with private investors. The state is keenly focussing on culture, heritage and religion tourism. Its new focus is Bollywood tourism.

Chandigarh

Under its broad tourism action plan the key agenda of the Chandigarh tourism authorities has been to concentrate on medical and rural tourism, setting up of theme parks, hotels and Bollywood tourism actively.

Rajasthan

One of the most sought-after states by international tourists, Rajasthan is surging ahead in its tourism agenda. Its core areas have been adventure tourism, cultural and heritage tourism, eco-tourism, religious and pilgrim tourism. The main agenda of its tourism policy has been to make its tourism industry a 'People's Industry'.

What is the Centre doing?

On its part, the Centre has given a green signal to the development of tourism circuits across the country. Under the scheme of 'Integrated Development of Tourist Circuits' (IDTC), six tourism circuits are to be identified on an annual basis (one in each zone) for development to international levels. Funds to a maximum of Rs 8 crore per circuit are made available to the state governments for implementation based on project proposals. In the first two years of the IDTC agenda, 24 circuits across the country have been selected and more circuits are being identified region-wise in consultation with the state governments. But a very negligible interest has been garnered from the northern states towards this government initiative, mainly due to a lack of a Joint Tourism Promotional Council amongst all the northern states.

According to A K Misra, secretary, tourism, Govern-ment of India, "In the working of the Ministry of Tourism, we have to coordinate with each state. We have identified tourism circuits and development work gives equal footage to each destination, which is part of the circuit. There is a separate setup for the north eastern region but hardly any special setup for the north Indian region at the central level looking into tourism related issues. However, there is the National Developmental Council in which chief ministers of all the states and the union territories meet once a year and discuss issues pertaining to their respective state."

While the government has played its role as a facilitator, many within the industry feel that for the north Indian states there has been no effort by the Centre to urge state governments to constitute a committee for tourism for joint promotion. According to Alok Kumar Jain, secretary - tourism, Government of Uttaranchal, "About 90 per cent of Uttaranchal is mountainous and therefore the Himalayas is our USP. We also have two world heritage sites and tourist attractions in abundance. In order to promote this, we are willing to partner with any state or any tourism body that plans to create a committee or a council for the betterment of this region."

He added, "What is important for a tourist is an itinerary; the number of states or the destinations don't matter to him nor the political or the state boundaries. There could be no better thing than working out an integrated package. We shall always welcome any initiative that aims to unite all the regional states to form a circuit. This regional committee can take up issues like tourist transport tax, which proves to be a heavy burden for tourists It should also look into issues like connectivity and infrastructure development besides joint tourism promotions."

Waltzing together

Both PHDCCI (PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) are actively persuading the states to form a joint tourism promotional council to work together in order to collectively promote and market its tourist destinations to the world. So far, the persistence has borne fruit with the formation of the National Developmental Council. Let's take look at the initiatives of both PHDCCI and CII.

PHDCCI:

PHDCCI has been planning a constitution for the committee of northern region tourism secretaries. According to Anil Bhandari, chairman (Tourism Committee) PHDCCI, "The focus of the PHDCCI Tourism Committee has been the planned development of tourism infrastructure and effective marketing of tourism, particularly the northern states serviced by the Chamber including Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh. The committee has been organising interactions with the policymakers and other authorities responsible for the smooth functioning of the tourism industry and focusing on rationalisation of tax structure, easy and smooth movement of tourists and tourist vehicles within the country, without facing hurdles at state borders." Bhandari added, "We have been emphasising the development Special Tourism Economic Zones to facilitate large investments for creating world class infrastructure for tourism industry in various states."

While certain states have come together to collectively promote tourism, the future predicted by PHDCCI, the CII and the trade is that both the Centre and the states need to forge alliances with all the northern states to develop tourism circuits, jointly promote and market them and work in unison to develop them.