Flexible charter flight rules, direct airline connectivity between India and key cities in Buddhist countries, connecting the primary Buddhist destinations by luxury/premium trains, concept of ‘Hotel on Wheels’, improved wayside amenities with adequate health and hygiene, linking destinations and creating subsidiary destinations to hold tourists post pilgrimage activities and tying ups with Chinese, Japanese & Thai banks & financial institutions for in destination ATMs/Cash Dispensation facilities.
These are some of the major suggestions among a few others that have been recommended by Government’s major think tank, NITI Aayog in its latest report seeking to enhance the footfall of the Buddhist tourists in India which is at present very miniscule. In its report, ‘Promoting Spiritual Tourism in the Land of Buddha’ the Niti Aayog took exception that even though India has a significant number of Buddhist sites in different States , the number of foreign Buddhist pilgrims visiting the country is not only paltry but also marginally declined over the years when compared to other Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and ASEAN.
It pointed out that given the fact that India has been recognized as a destination for spiritual tourism since ages for both domestic and international tourists, it must unleash the potential of spiritual tourism. “Against this backdrop, the potential of Buddhist tourism may be explored to attract tourists, especially in the post pandemic era. India is known as the ‘Land of the Buddha’ as Gautam Buddha founded Buddhism about 2,500 years ago in this region,” said the report making the case for cashing in on the growing sector. Needless to say, with a global populace of nearly 500 million, Buddhism is the 4th largest religion in the world and offers huge tourism revenue opportunities. Majority of the Buddhists live in China (50%), Thailand (13%), Japan (9%), Myanmar (8%), Sri Lanka (3%), Vietnam (3%), Cambodia (3%), South Korea (2%), India (2%) and Malaysia (1%). Though steps have been taken to cash in on the sector, for which various projects have been proposed as the art of the Buddhist circuits in five Indian states under the Swadesh Darshan scheme. These are Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, most of them are way behind their scheduled deadlines. “Slow disbursal of funds and poor monitoring of projects have been cited as the major reasons for the slow progress under the Scheme,” noted the think tank in the report.
Apart from these, a number of factors like inadequate public infrastructure and tourist facilities at Buddhist tourist sites, limited multi-lingual guides, limited visitor interaction with, limited online marketing of Buddhist heritage sites and lack of information about authentic local arts, crafts shops, have led to a decline in Buddhist tourist footfall over the years.