‘Phenomenal Forts, Zero Destinations’: Sanjeev Sanyal Warns India Is Missing A Tourism Opportunity
India’s demographic window may offer only a 25-year opportunity, but economist and Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council member Sanjeev Sanyal says the country is still failing to capitalise on one of its biggest low-hanging sectors: tourism.
Speaking on TheOddCastShow podcast, Sanyal warned that India has not been able to take tourism to the next level despite rising domestic spending power and world-class infrastructure in other parts of the economy.
“Demographic advantage doesn’t last forever. It’ll last for about 25-odd years from here. So around about 2050 onwards, we will also age like all other countries,” he said, adding that India is not the youngest nation in the world and that “our own birth rates have crashed.”
With roughly a billion people in the working-age group, he argued that India must get its act together and really take advantage of these 25 years and get the economy up there where it wants it to be. “There are many things we need to do, but one of the things we need to do is to drive growth.”
He said there were parts of the economy that were genuinely world-class – like the IT sector, parts of the pharmaceutical industry, electronics, defence and so on. But there are also areas, he added, where the country is simply not doing much, despite them being low-hanging fruit – and tourism is one of them.
“We have not been able to take it to the next level, and we really need to get our act together,” the noted economist said. He pointed out that Indian travellers today spend heavily both in India and abroad – a shift from even a decade ago.
“There was a time when…in the most expensive palace hotels, let’s say in Rajasthan, there would be hardly any Indians. Now it’s all Indians. And they are paying top dollar literally for weddings and other such things.”
Sanyal said India has “phenomenal” tourism assets but fails to leverage them. “We are in Pune. Within two hours drive of this place, there are some phenomenal forts. But how many of them have been converted into top-notch tourist destinations? None.”
“So, we need to begin to think about this and leverage these things much more than we do. But it requires a somewhat different way of thinking about all of this than we have historically had. So, first of all, we need to preserve those locations as experiences.”
He also criticised the pattern of poorly designed public works near heritage spots. “Unfortunately, one of the big problems in India is…I feel afraid of sometimes even mentioning a good tourist location because not so long after I mention it, the state tourism department discovers it and builds an ugly PWD construction right in front of it. So this PWD architecture problem is a very serious problem that we have.”
Beyond infrastructure, he said civic sense remains a barrier. “You’ll go to a nice, beautiful site, and there’ll be water bottles lying around. And sometimes it’s not the government’s fault at all. In the end, there has to be a level of pride that we the people of India have towards our sites.”
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