Photo by Shashank Hudkar on Unsplash India's rich tapestry of history, culture, and natural beauty attracts millions of tourists each year.  Domestic tourism is also on the rise in India, and being the world's most populous country, domestic tourism itself has a potential to contribute more than overseas tourists. However, the surge in tourism often brings challenges such as traffic congestion, pollution, littering compounded by inadequate infrastructure of tourist locations which are often small-towns. As I wrote of Nainital in my previous post , most Indian tourist destinations are grappling with these problems resulting in destruction of ecology, as well as local culture and heritage. Over commercialization of tourist related activities also leads to depletion of natural beauty offered by many of these destinations.  Many of these issues are complex, and outside the wherewithal of local communities to manage. The only way these problems can be tackled with a government-bac...

Countries like India, which were not prosperous enough for development to be funded in each corner of the country, felt the pinch of the neo-capitalist economy. In prosperous nations, in spite of centralization, economic prosperity was widespread. But here, lack of resources coupled with corruption, slowed down the developmental rush of the early independence years by 1970s; the 1980s was marked by confusion in economic policies. Come the 1990s; with communism fallen, decentralization and liberalization on, a new wave of enthusiasm crept in the economy. But this all is probably happening too little and too late. The argument in favour of high-taxation for the rich is that this money would be utilized for the uplift of the poor. What has been observed on the ground however, is that it is the middle class (and not the rich) which feels the pinch of taxation, while the poor do not seem to be benefited at all. The reasons behind this phenomenon would be the topic for another write-up and I...

1NDIA , One Nation, One Billion People, One Dream, One Voice One India The OneIndia (by Reliance and now BSNL, MTNL ... and ... Airtel) campaign is another step towards equalizing (or rationalizing) the mobile tariff schemes. Another step in the direction of universalizing telecom availability! Are these simply marketing promotions or indicators towards the new ways of economic thinking that are entering our policy making corridors? By the early 1900s, the theory of free markets had firmly established itself. The rise of the United States, as a formidable economic power, ahead of Great Britain was a proof to its success. However, towards the end of the economic crisis, in the early 1920s when industrialization was in full swing in Europe and in its infancy in countries like India, communism also rose with its own philosophy of state controlled ‘factors of production’. Meanwhile the economic crisis of 1929 loomed large over the capitalist world; as a result even capitalist governments s...