Flagging of MV Ganga Vilas, the longest river cruise opens a new vertical - river tourism

MV Ganga Vilas, the world’s longest river cruise, will go a long way promoting tourism in the eastern states concerned, boosting economic activity there, and generating employment. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today flagged off the cruise Varanasi through video conferencing. As many as 32 tourists from Switzerland will enjoy the maiden journey to reach Dibrugarh in Assam via Bangladesh. The Prime Minister also inaugurated a Tent City, with 200 luxury tents offering the scenic view of the famed ghats of the Ganga. The tent city lets tourists soak the spirituality and mystique of the ancient city and the holy river, complete with live classical music, the famous evening ‘aarti,’ and yoga sessions. Modi also laid the foundation of Rs 1,000-crore inland waterways projects. He rightly said, “With this cruise, many places of eastern India will now figure in the world tourism map... What can be more unfortunate than the fact that since Independence the banks of the Ganga became backward, let alone developed.” Cruise tourists, witnessing 27 river systems, will be able to visit a variety of 50 prominent destinations, including world heritage sites, national parks, river ghats, and cities like Patna, Shahiganj in Jharkhand, Kolkata, Dhaka, and Guwahati. It is interesting to note Modi’s interest in and zeal for promoting tourism, including the luxury variant. The cruise, costing Rs 20 lakh per head, is surely for the top income bracket people.

This highlights the fact Modi is perhaps the first Prime Minister who is not infected with the India-is-poor syndrome. In the last one hundred years, if not more, Indian politicians have not only suffered from this syndrome but also promoted it in their statements and speeches, policies and programmes. Worse, poverty was even glorified, something which began with Mahatma Gandhi. One casualty was tourism, for it was regarded as the prerogative of the rich. It never received the attention that other areas—for example, heavy industries under Jawaharlal Nehru, agriculture under Indira Gandhi, and computers under Rajiv Gandhi—received. After all, only the rich people are interested in tourism—or so it was thought. Few in India—and none in politics—even bothered to have a look at tourism which has enormous growth and job potentials. This is one sector in which people from all walks of life—the educated and the uneducated, the skilled, the semi-skilled, and the unskilled, artisans and craftsmen, hotels and shopkeepers—participate. Unsurprisingly, the tourism sector is highly taxed, as parliamentary panels have reported. It goes to the credit of PM Modi that he not only recognised the potential of tourism but also worked on it; the promotion of the Kutch region in Gujarat, where a tent city came up much earlier, is a testimony to his support for tourism. It is time his Government thought of bringing down the incidence of taxation in the sector.