ITS ALL ABOUT “OM SHANTI OM”….

A brief hiatus and I am back. Durgapuja and Kali puja.. a month long celebration in West Bengal.. the biggest festival ever for the Bengalis. As I went pandal hopping from one part of the city to the other , with huge lights glaring and sound blazing, crowds moving in herds, I was amazed at the huge transition that these pujas had gone through. From the ‘parar pujo’ ( neighborhood puja) to totally a corporate sponsored puja with a particular theme in the perspective…the Bengal pujas have seen them all.

While wandering through my memory lanes it reminded me of Renuka Chowdhury..the India’s tourism minister , when she immediately after taking charge of her new assignment , announced before a group of reporters .”.I want to open up unconventional avenues, like religious tourism, not in one part of India , but all over the country.”

India has emerged as one of the lucrative market for religious tourism. A study by the Delhi based National Council for Applied Economic Research( NCAER), shows that out of the 230 million tourist trips undertaken in India, the largest proportion is made up of religious pilgrimage. India has increasingly become a religious hub in the S-East Asia , with its diverse religion and cultures . For instance as many as 23 million people visited Tirupati, a temple town near southern India devoted to Lord Balaji. Tirupati’s annual list of pilgrims is higher than the total no of travelers visiting Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata put together.

Realizing its huge untapped potential , various religious trusts, state and central governments , have beefed up their managerial skills along with the blending of world class infrastructure. Travel masti a travel portal provides religious packages to tourists which covers as many as 23 destinations across India. Golden temple at Amritsar, the Tirupati temple offers online booking for accommodation and security to their pilgrims around the temple complex. Japan’s Nikko hotels has lined up with a series of hotels along the Buddhist circuit in east India. India’s railway tourism corporation runs a special package tour , while India’s only helicopter ferry service , Pawan Hans; runs a helicopter service right up to the temple. Another hot religious spot among the pilgrims is Orissa, where the state government has upgraded the condition of the roads. The temple managements are becoming more and more pilgrim friendly. From a data by NCAER, it gives an idea about the religious traffic in India.

• Tirupati ------- 23 million.

• Puri-------18.17 million.

• Vaishno Devi------17.25 million.

• Hardwar…….11.04 million.

• Naina Devi------8.28 million.

• Mathura-----8.28 million.

• Ajmer Sharif-----8.22 million.

• Amritsar-----7.13 million.

• Shirdi( W.India)------6.21million.

• Badrinath and Kedarnath-----4.1 million.

Well considering the splurge of devotees we can safely say that all of us..from the pilgrims to the businessman.. the whole hulla is about an intangible concept…OM SHANTI OM.