Department Of Tenacity (DoT)

Jagmohan	Rathi Vinay Jha	Amitabh Kant	Rashmi Verma

Not long ago, a ‘toothless’ Department of Tourism (DoT) had to wait on other wings of the government for favours like financial resources, tax reliefs, visa and aviation supports. No longer so. The political will is slowly but surely accepting tourism as an important part of the national agenda, thanks largely to the growing awareness of its role in employment and poverty alleviation. The Prime Minister’s references to tourism in his Independence Day speeches from the Red Fort, the Planning Commission’s support and the Finance Minister’s largess reflect the change that has come about in the functioning of the Department of Tourism (DOT).

Jagmohan and Rathi Vinay Jha came on the scene when the Planning Commission was about to take up the tenth Five-Year Plan. DoT’s first major achievement was a five-fold increase in the outlay on tourism to Rs 2,900 crore or from an annual allocation of Rs 110 crore in the ninth plan to Rs 600 crore a year in the tenth plan. In the little over two years that Jagmohan has been at the helm some important changes in the structure of DoT have been made. According to Jha, secretary tourism, government of India, the minister has introduced a new style of governance ‘which could yield maximum results, with minimum cost and in the shortest possible time’.

Jha gives the example of the Ajanta-Ellora development work where this procedure was followed. The result: The entire amount of Rs 127 crore was utilised in time and the upbeat Japanese who funded the project have agreed to finance the second phase of Rs 300 crore. Reminded that sceptics had reservations about the department's ability to spend the higher allocations of the Planning Commission, Jha says let the figures speak for themselves: During 2002-03, DoT not only fully utilised the outlay of Rs 225 crore but also spent an additional Rs 25 crore. The current year’s outlay of Rs 325 crore has already been spent plus an additional Rs 25 crore. For 2004-05 DoT hopes to get Rs 500 crore, all of which, she says, will be spent.

On its own part, DoT is going ahead with setting up tourism hubs integrating the elements of tourism, culture and clean civic life and environment protection. A dozen hubs and circuits have been selected, work on which has begun. These include the Buddhist circuit in the east; a heritage, nature and wildlife circuit in central India (Gwalior-Shivpuri-Chanderi-Orchha-Khajuraho-Jhansi-Bhopal-Sanchi); Konkan-Riviera circuit in the west, and the backwaters and beach circuit in Kerala. The north-east has been chosen for an eco-tourism circuit and Rajasthan for a desert circuit.

Jagmohan has also selected nearly 30 monuments and tourist centres which are being developed on the lines of Ajanta-Ellora and the Red Fort in Delhi, and work at several places is going place as for instance in Kurukshetra. Among these destinations are Majuli Islands in Assam, Easter in Chhattisgarh, Hardwar-Rishikesh in Uttaranchal, Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, Coorg in Karnataka, and, Ayodhya in UP. It was a surprise to this writer that The Deccan Odyssey, the luxury train on the lines of the Palace on Wheels recently launched by Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation and the railways received a DoT grant of Rs 8.5 crore.

About marketing, the tourism secretary speaks of the Incredible India campaign. The primary objective was to establish a unique and single positive identity - Incredible India. The campaign, DoT feels, has brought in good results. Not only has there been a 15 per cent increase in international arrivals in 2003, there has also been a sizeable growth in foreign exchange earnings of 23 per cent from US$ 2.92 billion to US$ 3.60 billion. The tenth plan has a target of doubling India’s share of the world market to 0.62 per cent (from the present 0.38) which would translate into 5.6 million arrivals by 2007.

Jha is on terra firma when she says that DoT's voice is now heard in other wings of the government. This paragraph in Jaswant Singh's ministerial budget (vote on account) endorses her claim: “Government has now decided upon the venues for four global standard international convention centres to be established through private-public partnership. I am glad two of these will be located in the metropolitan cities of Delhi and Mumbai, and one each in Goa and Rajasthan.” The result of the good work done by the Jagmohan-Rathi Vinay Jha team, ably assisted by joint secretary Amitabh Kant and additional director general, Rashmi Verma, and the entire department is now beginning to bear fruit.

Rabindra Seth - New Delhi