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India has yet to exploit its full potential as a tourist destination and events such as the country’s first art biennale are a pointer to it, senior bureaucrat Amitabh Kant said.
At a talk organised on the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the former Tourism Secretary of Kerala cited a set of tourism programmes he spearheaded and, aided with video clippings, showed how they found success in boosting the image of the State and the country as a cultural destination as well.
Among them were campaigns such as God’s Own Country and Incredible India, besides those meant to give training to guides as well as taxi drivers, and creating awareness among people about preserving heritage sites and tourist resorts in the locality.
‘Brand India’
Lecturing on ‘Brand India’ at the Aspinwall House in Fort Kochi, Kant, who is currently CEO and Managing Director of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, said records showed an average of 30 people in India moving every minute from villages to urban areas in search of a livelihood.
“The tourism segment is what aids their job prospects. There are ways to boost it. We have to use them well,” he said, adding that endeavours such as the biennale can give fresh energy to the country’s tourism sector.
Public-privatepartnership
Speaking at a separate seminar, V. Venu, Joint Secretary, Department of Culture, Union Government pointed out that the ongoing Kochi-Muziris Biennale is one of the finest examples of successful implementation of a public-private partnership project in the country.
The Union Government’s budget, he said, earmarks only 0.2 per cent of expenses towards cultural matters. As for Kerala, the allocation is still poorer.
Given that, only PPPs can ensure implementation of ideas like the biennale, he said during the talk titled ‘Public-Private Partnership in Heritage’.
Private support to heritage conservation and growth of the arts need not be derisively branded as a “corporate” activity, as money is anyway necessary for such tasks, he added.
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