“Incredible India” - This is the imaginative attention-grabbing phrase which
our tourism corporation uses to advertise India. It is also very convincingly
backed up by images that are truly vibrant- colourful, inviting, intriguing …
incredible. Elephants, snake-charmers, women in colourful attire smiling under
the weight of their burdens, magnificent monuments … India sells herself thus
to the tourist. India is also where people come to seek peace and there are gurus
aplenty- the fake and the real …. That is tourism too albeit of an esoteric kind.
At the other end of the spectrum conscientious news reporters project
another set of images that seem to be far more enduring than those of the
tourism industry. These are images of India’s abject poverty – deprivation,
destitution and devastation through natural and other disasters.
Does India sell as the land of snake-charmers and elephants and instant
nirvana as also of slums and cyclones? Or is India only that and nothing else?
Or is it that India is expected to project an image others will approve of or be
more comfortable with? These
