Leverage tourism to reverse ‘jobless growth’

Quentin Jeremy Clerc and Marie Droz came to India to explore its rich history and partake of its storied culture. On October 22 what the Swiss couple experienced instead was the country’s dark underbelly. While on a visit to Fatehpur Sikri, near Agra, they were stalked, harassed and later, assaulted with sticks and stones by a group of locals. The unprovoked attack left Clerc with a fractured skull and Droz, a broken arm. Both of them want to leave India as quickly as possible.

These are not isolated events. Media reports quoting home ministry data suggest that in 2014 there were 113 incidents of crime against foreign tourists in New Delhi alone. In 2015 it was higher, at 135. Such developments hurt India’s image and raise questions about our culture which teaches us to treat guests as God — Atithi Devo Bhava.

It is also a reflection of the fact that as a country we are yet to fully recognise the role tourism plays in economic development and more so, in job creation. Successive governments have shied away from leveraging tourism’s full potential and inculcating its benefits among the nation’s collective consciousness. The Narendra Modi-led NDA government too is guilty of this.

Battling ‘jobless growth’, the NDA government has chosen to focus on the employment guarantee scheme in rural India (allocation for MGNREGA has risen by 40 per cent between 2015 and 2018) and other flagship programmes elsewhere across the country such as ‘Make in India’, ‘Startup India’ and a fillip to affordable housing in the last three years. The results are hard to come by even as a million youngsters attain working age every month and as many as 100 million jobs need to be created between now and 2025 to avoid what experts are increasingly warning us about — a demographic catastrophe. There are reasons for this:lack of low-skilled job opportunities outside of agriculture even as skills mismatch and automation hurt the formal sector.

Tourism offers the perfect solution. For every 30 tourists one core tourism job gets created which then helps add another 1.5 jobs in related sectors. What is more pertinent here is that a good portion of the jobs that get generated are low-skilled, for women and for first-time workers — the type of job opportunities that India presently needs. The sector also has the potential to create micro-entrepreneurs who in turn can employ more people. The multiplier effect it delivers is high.

In fact, tourism helped Spain which receives over 68 million international tourists annually (India, in comparison, gets 8.80 million visitors) fight its recent economic downturn. Understandably, the sector accounts for 5.8 per cent of Spain’s GDP as against India’s 2 per cent. According to the World Tourism Organisation, the sector provides for 10 per cent of the world’s GDP, 7 per cent of the global trade and creates one in every 11 jobs worldwide.

It is time the Government gives the same importance to the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report as it does to the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings. For the record, India jumped 12 places to rank 40th among 136 countries in the 2017 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness rankings (Spain topped the chart). The strong show was aided by price competitiveness, availability of historic sites and strong cultural base. What should worry the Government is the not-so-good performance in a few other parameters.

The country ranks a low 103 on presence of an enabling environment for tourism (even Rwanda, Iran and Algeria outrank us), it is 104 when it comes to how actively the Government promotes the sector, and with regard to safety and security the performance is a low114 (we have Colombia, Yemen, Nigeria, Lebanon and Pakistan for company). In health and hygiene, we are ranked 104 and in environment sustainability 134 (only Kuwait and Yemen are below us).

In 2015 tourism created 107 million jobs worldwide and supported 284 million other jobs. The International Labour Organisation estimates these numbers will grow to 136 million and 370 million respectively by 2026. Policymakers need to get their act together now if India has to corner a fair share of these jobs.

Their recent work inspires little confidence. The Taj Mahal went missing from the Uttar Pradesh government’s tourism booklet and the discussion they have triggered in the media is whether the marble monument was built by traitors or does it reflect India’s culture. It’s not surprising that Clerc and Droz do not have better memories of India to take back to Switzerland.

COMMENT NOW