Tourism as a Bridge for Peace

I was an excellent student in academics, and if you talk of school days, I knew I was pretty bright because of the fact that I used to stand first in the class during my entire school phase. Then I graduated, and there I was a gold medalist in the university. Subsequently, I pursued my MBA in Delhi with two minds. One, with an eye on the administrative services, I thought it better to stand on your own feet first. For that, you need to be employed. So I chose to do an MBA, which was also pretty close to the administrative area. I came to the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, and did an MBA from ‘76 to ‘78. And immediately after that, I took up a job with the intention that I should have enough time to prepare for the civil services. And right from day one, I started working on it.

If you ask me why I am passionate about administrative services, first, because you know when you are very bright in academics, you tend to get such feelers from people around you, whether they are friends or relatives. Then you also assess yourself when you grow up, you come to college, you compete in the MBA entrance examination, and you see people coming from all over the country and you still get qualified for the entrance exam. Then subsequently you apply for a job and you get that too. You start feeling that, ‘yes, you are the material who can make a try’ and the passion is on one side. The other is that the confidence that you may also get was certainly there because of good academics. Subsequently, I tried the civil services and fortunately, I qualified in 1982.

Since then, my 35-year journey has been very interesting. I couldn’t have wished for a better career because the kinds of challenges and opportunities that you have in civil services are unparalleled. You get such rich exposure. My selection of career was as per my own requirement, as per my satisfaction.

Yes, you have a point. In fact, I enjoyed my almost six years of stint in Election Commission so much. This was one assignment, where my exposure was maximum and how? You know, having general elections in India is said to be the biggest show on earth. You involve so many departments ministries, and state governments. Let me also tell you that we deal with IAS, IPS, IRS, Indian Revenue Service officers, and observers, and thousands of them are involved as observers all over the country. Now the kind of interaction you have with them, you know, senior officers, you deal with the DMs and SPs, you know, in the various states.

When we had elections, we used to go to the states. For example, I was in charge of Gujarat and Bihar. So we would stay there for almost a month for preparations and all. So you get exposed to the entire culture of that place. So that is one. So one knew about the government working so well. And ultimately, since we have already worked in the state governments at different capacities, at different levels.

But yes, becoming Secretary to the Government of India is something which I think when we are young, IAS officers would be joined the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy. You know, we all used to talk on the first day, and I wish, and we had the director of the LBSNA at that time, he gave an inaugural lecture, and he always would motivate us – ‘today you are a probationer, one day probationer, and I want to see you becoming Secretary to Government of India’.

Now, that kind of dream you start having right from the word go when you join. And yes, it’s a very important day for any IAS officer, who ultimately gets the opportunity, I would say, of being at that level. Not just because it is not status oriented, I am not talking in those terms, but in your department or your ministry, you are at the helm at the civil service level as a civil servant.

You’re looking after the entire country. So that satisfaction of being on top and both in terms of responsibility, in terms of the scope that you can, that you have during those two, three years as secretary to serve the nation at the very topmost level. And you are actually capable of doing it because your policies, your directions, your thoughts, and your vision apply down the line to the entire tourism fraternity and the entire country. So that is important. So you have to be extra careful. And that is why I enjoyed every day of my tenure as Secretary of Tourism.

And you get contacts. You tend to build contacts not just within India. I used to represent India in international forums, UNWTO, you have these world travel market, you have ITB, Berlin, and so many other. In fact, ASEAN India has one forum on tourism itself. So that way, you get to know about international success stories also, successful case studies also. And you come back and implement. You see what is happening in the other countries. So it was, of course, an eventful day.

You mentioned August 2015. The best thing is that when you come out of this post, when you finish your tenure, what is the level of satisfaction that you have? That is very important. It is not just the joining which is important. It is the end, you know, when you come out of that particular position and then you see, and that I can gauge my own performance or you may say whatever I tried to do during those two years in the sense in terms of the love and affection which I’m getting from the tourism industry even now.

I think I believe in both sects at the same time. Tourism benefits whenever peace is present, and peace induces tourism. So tourism is both a beneficiary and a generator. When a soldier crosses the border and enters another neighbouring country, it is termed a war. But when a tourist enters the same country, he is welcomed with flowers and greetings. Such is the power of tourism.

It’s a very difficult question, though. I would certainly mention that—my own choice. But India has always been considered a land of peace and non-violence. We know this very well, whether it is Buddha’s teachings or Gandhian philosophy, which are still very relevant to India.

You know, how we have glorified peace all these years, right, from ancient India times. And today also, in terms of the reasons for coming to India, the spiritual peace-loving people, are our biggest strength – the natural heritage and cultural heritage. These are two areas even proved by the tourism and travel index, which is thrown by international organisations. They say that India’s biggest strength is the natural heritage and cultural heritage. So I will pick up a place where people look and find the real India.

Since you have tied me down to just one place, I would say that Sarnath and Bodh Gaya. You know, people from Southeast Asian nations who primarily follow Buddhism, they do come here for some spiritual reasons. But Buddha’s teachings basically as an apostle of peace attracts everyone. So I would say that one place where you go and you find peace is Bodh Gaya or Sarnath where you realise the teachings of Buddha and that is something, which I think could be an icon, which I have chosen, when you talk purely in terms of peace.

So I was talking of infrastructure and you talked about public-private partnership. Now, look at our country at this moment. All good roads, whether it is National Expressways, whether it is national highways, any person can see there are tolls on the highways. Now, what are these tolls? These are the signs of public-private partnership. And there is no doubt and there should not be any, in fact even government admits that the resources with governments are limited. And our needs are too many. That is why the private sector’s entry becomes extremely relevant.

In tourism itself, when you talk infrastructure, for example – the latest trend is the airports. You see how convenient the airport terminals have become. I won’t say that they were not so convenient. But then things are changing. The private sector’s exposure is much more. They can spend much more money and get it back also. Government has its own limitations. It doesn’t have so much of machinery also. So the kind of investment that they can make into new things, modern things, is immense and shorter. The procedure in the government is longer. So what ultimately is that there is a deficit, both in resources as well as there is a need felt in the process of development of this country, where the private sector’s entry is more of a necessity today.

Tourism is all about private sector. You know, right from the time when I was Secretary of Tourism Rajasthan Government, 15 years ago, rather 20 years ago, and till the time I came as Secretary to Government of India, I have been always saying this that for generating tourism, we have to seek the help of the private sector and we are more as a facilitator of tourism and not to create. In fact, today the tourism development corporations, bungalows are gradually winding up, they are being withdrawn. So accommodation providing is not the sole objective of the government. So we bring in policies, we create an environment, an enabling environment by which taxes, regulations, these should be tourism-friendly and private sector will come in.

Well, I would not like to make any differentiation in the quality. Fortunately, I have spent 35 years in government. Over the last seven and a half years after my superannuation, I am more associated with private sector people as a consultant advisor. I go to government organisations for resources as a resource person. But my association in business is with the private sector. I realize that the kind of intellect that we have in government is no less than the private sector. At times, it is even more. That could also be because government, in all, if you take the total man force, workforce, government’s workforce is smaller than the private sector.

So, the quality of manpower in the private sector has not been judged. They’ve not been trained. When we joined the IAS, we were given two years of probation training. We were taken all over. We went for Bharat Darshan. We were shown the entire country, and we didn’t work for two years; we just learned, learned, learned. They educated us. The idea is that for the next 35 years, they have to serve the country.

Now I’m just giving you this example and this has not been done today, it’s been happening for ages. That kind of thing, maybe the private sector cannot invest. If you talk of scaling in tourism sector, I have handled the many Indian Institute of Hotel Management. Today 95% of the people, the workforce which are trained, the young professionals in tourism, they come out from the government organizations, government educational institutions, they are there, but basically for their own capital consumption.

You know, if one hotel chain has one institute, they basically take the people for their own consumption. But who would train and skill the workforce in the private sector? Now that is something very important. But once it is, the only thing is that in the private sector, there is more modern knowledge that the private sector has – knowledge of technologies, the latest that is happening, especially the next generation and the current generation and Gen Z and Gen X, Y, whatever, they are really much, much faster and in terms of knowledge, they are much farther than people in the government. And that is the reason also when you talked about PPP mode, it is not just an infrastructure.

I’m really very impressed and very pleased to know. In fact, I read some of the works that you will are doing already. And as you have mentioned in sustainability and inclusive tourism in responsible tourism area to how livelihoods within tourism can be augmented and to sustainable model and all, you’re doing really doing a great job. In fact, the very fact that you have started this series, and particularly you started with tourism that itself I think speaks volumes about your efforts and the kind of job or the good work that IPE Global is doing and plans to do in future.

So, I congratulate Shilpi and the IPE Global company for taking this initiative. This is going to prove further that you really mean what you have planned to do.

I think first of all, they need to be good human beings. And only when you are a good human being that you would think of good for others. In order to be a good human being and to be happy in your life, I would suggest an old proverb, nothing succeeds like success. So a successful or happy person will be more responsible. And he will tend to have sustainability more than all the things that he takes in his hands.

Subscribe to this podcast feed for future interviews. For more information on IPE Global, visit ipeglobal.com or follow us on our LinkedIn page.