Attended last evening the book launch by Montek Singh Ahluwalia at Taj Mansingh - 0f Amitab Kant's book: Branding India: An Incredible Story - with Union Minister of State for Tourism, Selja, in the chair. Others on the dais were PM's Principal Secretary TKA Nair, Amit Agarwal of Harper Collins, and Arjun Sharma of WTTC. A very high profile event, with Amitab giving a synopsis of his Incredible Story on a Power Point Presentation - which itself was incredible. Not only has he been part of India's effort to boost Tourism in an effort to tap the huge potential, he has also been able to put all that story together in his book which in itself by no small a measure is a stupendous achievement.
Apart from every one of the Tourism industry - the types of erstwhile royalties of Rajastan like Gaj Singh of Jodhpur... to hoteliers, big-travel-honchos, to publishers of travel magazines, seniour bureaucrats and industrialists, the world and everyone you can think of... were there present - the glitterati, the culturati, the diplo-mightee, the artee-fartee and the partee-coterie, as well as the socialitee... it was an occasion for such like me to meet friends and for many others more adept at such - to brush shoulders with those they normally do not get a chance to brush shoulders with.
Talking of tourism, yes... India has made some progress in the past decade and more... But there are miles to go. I would assess what's achieved hitherto as just a drop in the ocean as compared to what could be and needs to be achieved.
Amitab has rightly listed high among priorities in the lists of concerns... "sanitation and cleanliness". Very pertinent. Why can't there be a national movement on this. To an extent there are examples how this has been done in this very country - in the aftermath of the early nineties plague, one Deputy Commissioner in Surat showed how his city could be cleaned. Why can't all our media put its act together to have a national crusade to educate our population on hygine and sanitation. Why is it that after 60+ years of Independence the whole of India is still one big open toilet? How is it that the country cannot stop defecating in the open? Is it because we love to expose our bottoms to every foreigner's camera and revel in presenting them with the golden deposits from our bottoms we leave behind in the open to fill the environment with highly welcoming(?) aromas and perfumery of an Indian brand? Branding India indeed!
Why is it that we have dead bodies rotting in the open polluting the holiest of our so called holy rivers? How is it that the entry point to every city in the country is so very un-welcoming with encroachments, unauthorised parking, congestion, stagnat waters, garbage and filth. Why the same scenario at every touristy or heritage site that makes it abhorring for any tourist to visit?
This, and this alone, is the prime priority. Unless and until we learn to discipline ourselves as regards these basics, branding India will just be as unwelcome and scorching as the branding by a burning red hot iron rod...
On a personal note, while not attempting to take the shine off Amitab's glory by any measure, I need to record here of the time around the mid/late-90s when I myself published articles in the Indian Express and elsewhere titled "Incredible India" and "The Wonder That Was India" which were pieces that put together some less known facts about the 'firsts' India had across the millennia of world/ and human history... What tremendous satisfaction for me then, to see the Incredible India campaign spear-headed by Amitab and his colleagues in the Tourism Ministries take off in the manner it has - so beautifully, ....to make such an impact world wide!
(For those interested in my said writings, some of these articles are still floating around in cyberspace on the internet - as also in the archives of my these very blogs - if one takes pains to dig herein deep enough....)
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