India Keeps Missing the Boat

I hate these “Mothers’ Day, Fathers Day, Morai Maaman Day, Tourism Day, Ypga Day” etc. in general.  And I got particularly incensed today, after seeing a GoI Ad on Tourism.

Each World Tourism Day, governments roll out grand slogans. “Visit India,” “Incredible India,” “Heritage. Hospitality. Happiness.” But while the rest of the world counts and consolidates tourist dollars, India still stumbles, distracted, slow, and half-hearted. For a country with 43 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, extraordinary geography, religion, history, the sounds, the smells, the colours — the promise is vast. But the delivery? Woeful.

Here is how the numbers lay bare India’s failure to seize the lowest-hanging fruit.

• India brought in about 9.95 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2024.

• Japan had ~37 million overseas visitors in 2024.

• France crossed 100 million international tourist arrivals in 2024. 

• Paris alone is often cited with ~70 million visitors per year (international + domestic) in recent reports. It remains one of the most visited cities globally. 

• USA in 2024: approx 72.4 million international arrivals. 

Foreign tourists don’t just want beautiful monuments — they want ease. Safety. Reliability. Cleanliness. Order. Hospitality. Predictability. 

And India’s deficits are glaring.

• Basic things — clean public toilets, drinking water, waste disposal — are either missing or non-functional at many tourist sites. For example, popular waterfalls near Ranchi: shade structures, benches, toilets are broken, dirty or simply non-existent. 

• Bridges over rivers, pathways, warnings in dangerous zones are poorly maintained; occasionally fatal. I was in Sikkim in Dec. Lovely place. But what should take 1 hour by road on the mountains in any other country, takes upto 6 hours! Frustrating. 

• Overcrowding: transport, local roads, trains, hotels — all stretched. Cities that are in heavy demand have not invested proportionally in capacity or in managing peak flows. Today, you cannot DREAM of taking public transport to almost all places in India, excepting a few, as a foreigner. 

• Foreign tourists report harassment, overcharging, local “mafia” behaviour (unchecked guides, unlicensed operators, rogue transport). These are frequent in reports.

• The problem of women travellers feeling unsafe is real. While precise national aggregated data is spotty, anecdotal and media evidence are consistent enough to affect reputation.

• The visa regime is often cumbersome. Entry‐permits, bureaucratic delays, inner-line permits (for some regions) raise the cost (monetarily & psychologically).

• Big budgets get promised; but many of the promised projects either stall, are mismanaged, or don’t reach the “on-ground” victims: local transport to tourist sites; decent last-mile roads; functional emergency services; public health & sanitation.

• Tourism promotion sometimes seems superficial: glossy ads, influencers, “soft power” campaigns abroad. But with safety complaints, service quality failures, inconsistent rules (across states, localities), many first-time visitors leave with frustration. Word of mouth, once negative, spreads faster than any campaign.

• India has so much content: heritage, wildlife, landscapes, festivals, spiritual tourism, cuisine, beaches, mountain treks. Yet packaging is weak. Local site signage may be unavailable or not multilingual; guides may be untrained; supporting services (high-quality lodging, reliable food, transport) are uneven or wildly overpriced.

• Countries like France and Japan invest heavily in both product and perception. They ensure that historical sites are conserved, well-interpreted, with infrastructure to match tourism volumes. Multilingual signage, tourist maps, safety, clean public transport, and efficient regulation of services.

• Chances are that a foreigner would rather look at the flower shops selling Indian flowers in Singapore or Malaysia than in India! The humble tea-kadai boiler tea has been hijacked by Malaysia and today they are marketing it as their innovation – Teh Tarik!

Tourism is not vanity. It’s jobs, foreign exchange, regional development, conservation, pride, soft power. India’s failure to harvest the potential is economic mis-management, and cultural negligence. Each lost tourist is lost income, lost employment, lost global goodwill.

We have 8,000 years of culture, a kaleidoscope of religions, languages, landscapes, arts, history. We have food that draws people to the moon. Incredible tales, spectacular nature, pilgrimage, wildlife, spiritual solace. And yet draw less than 10m visitors a year, while Paris alone gets 70 million. This is not just suboptimal; it’s shameful.

We haven’t even plucked the lowest-hanging fruit. While others polish their paths, India lets its paths erode. While others ensure safety, predictability, good service, we scramble on crumbling infrastructure and sporadic law enforcement. 

Wake up. Because right now, as World Tourism Day passes, India is content with slogans. But tourists notice. Dollars notice. Historians, culture-keepers, local communities—all suffer if tourism is just talked about, not improved.

We should not just be ashamed of how far behind we are: we should be furious. We have the treasures. Let’s build the tourism framework. NOW. Not just for tourism, but for our dignity, for our  economy and for our culture.