Tourism finds place in Make in India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while launching the ‘Make in India’ campaign, talked about developing tourism. Excerpts from his speech...
Develop tour guides
Today, is there any synchronisation between the thought of the government, academic world, industry and the thoughts of youngsters seeking a job? I am sorry to say - No. We may want to develop tourism. But we may not have a system of developing guides in that village. Guide would be trained somewhere in Tamil Nadu and Taj Mahal would be in Agra. I mean to say that these are small things. If we do these focussed activities, then circumstances may change.
Look East, Link West
For a long time the Look East policy has been under discussion, everyone is talking about it. This is a good occasion, along with Look East, I would like to talk about Link West.
Look East is on one side and Link West on the other and we are linking both from the middle. We can establish our economic structure on a new platform from here. Whatever is the best in the world, why should we not have it? This should be the mood of the nation.
There are many opportunities, the infrastructure sector is important and so is the manufacturing sector. Now India cannot be run on that infrastructure if we have to reach our desired destination. Earlier, when there was a talk of infrastructure, it was over with discussion on rail, road, port and airport. We have to move towards the next- generation infrastructure. We need highways and similarly we need ‘I-ways’ too. When I say ‘ I- ways’, I mean information ways and that is for digital India. If there are electric grids, we need gas grids and water grids too. We also need optical fibre networks. We are dreaming of an India where private sector has ample opportunities to try their luck.
How do we update ourselves from where we are presently on Public Private Partnership? How to go into unchartered areas? We kept our focus confined to port development. The demand of the time is to move towards portled development. With ports there should be cold storage network, roads, rail, and an airport with port. Unless all this develops as a cluster, we can’t make a place for ourselves in the global market. Hence we wish to emphasise that. This is
one big area where you can try your luck. The point is that infrastructure is not an issue of just luxury. If we have to develop tourism; it is estimated that tourism is the industry with the highest growth. Can India capture it? Tourism needs huge infrastructure. There is a big scope for the hospitality industry. There are so many avenues, how do we harness them?
One of the biggest obstacles in our journey is this that if a decision is made by the centre, most of the implementations are taken care of by the states. If there is lack of understanding between the two, the industrialists are at loss whether to go to Delhi or to the State Government. He remains confused. Now, this confusion will no longer be there. I believe that states’ development is for India only. If investment comes in the States, it comes in India also. States and Centre should work collectively, shoulder to shoulder as a team. If centre gets a proposal then centre should go to the State on its own and ask how we can help together. If a State gets a proposal that needs Centre’s help, the State should come to the Centre without any hesitation, they should find solution together and things move forward. This great need has come up, to meet this, Centre and the States will have to come together.