WHERE ARE THE VILAGEWALLAS IN INDIA TRAVELLING TO THESE DAYS? (Fortune the Bottom of the Pyramid in Travel Businesses in India)

"I recall my grandma, amma, appa, brothers, sisters and neighbors sitting in bullock carts four or five in a row depending upon the crowd, talking the mud roads to the nearest places of worship widely known and visited by the villagers and the neighborhood but less known and hardly visited by the outside world. Not far into the Indian rural history am I taking about but just a 20-25 years ago. Most of the temple complexes in around my village at a reach of 20-30km had their unique congregations seasonally which attracted thousands of villagers", says Mr. Jitu Bhai sitting in panshop at Kharedi, a small village in the eastern part of Panchamahals in Dahos district of Gujarat. People in villages like Kharedi thousands of them spread across the country used to travel mostly in bullock carts and some of the rich in tractors to fairs and festivals without missing most of the year. That invariably used to be the travelling experience which the villagers started with and majority of the older generation actually ended with.

A number pedagogs in the industry opine that most of the rural population in India has actually not travelled beyond their district or neighboring districts. Venkat Ram Reddy who works for India Railways in Pune gets emotional  in expressing his part of story, "I recall the excitement my parents had for the first time travelling to Tirupati a pilgrimage destination many of them would dream those days to go. A dream my mom realized after thirty seven years." They were fortunate to have that slice of spiritual accessibility realized but the story with most of their generation remained unrealized for many more years.

Travelling their own country in India was a dream unreachable/unrealistic for too a recent times. How unimaginable it looks for the globalised world where we talk about ‘global village’, ‘squeezed world’ etc. It is indeed the responsibility of the stakeholders in the industry to enable these village folks to see the world outside they are confined to.

‘Fortune the Bottom of the Pyramid’ as envisaged by late professor C K Prahlad should show way out for the entrepreneurs and the businesses to look towards this unventured market so far. Before we analyze the intricacies of taping rural market for tourism businesses, it is important to dig into the de facto status of today’s movement of people from villages.

Rural population in India has been migrating from villages to urban areas looking for opportunities. The growing stress on farmers for sustenance due to failure of seasonal crops, encroachment of cultivable lands, less demand for the agricultural produce and high risk combined with dreams of giving better life to their next generations. Reasons are a plenty for migrating some seasonal and some permanent but the fact remains fact, migration is at an ascending level. Infact this migration from rural to urban has added numbers to the domestic tourism. People from small hamlets are travelling to nearby tourist destinations for pilgrimage and leisure purposes but at a very slow pace. ‘I visited Srisailam last sivaratri with my wife and children and have planned to go to Sirdi the next season’, says Mr. Balaih a resident of Pochampalli a rural tourism destination in Andhra Pradesh. He says he is motivated by tourists who visit his village and has saved some money for his next trip. Not everyone is so lucky as him to afford to travel but a beginning is always welcome.

Mr. Binu Alakode who visited Kumbalangi an award winning rural tourist destination near cochin in Kerala opines that villagers here are economically benefited due to growing tourism activities and are also taking time off to travel to other parts of the country’, thanks to the recognition and coordinated development of the destination. Come winter many people across their beliefs are found to wear the Ayappa attire black on black in south India especially the rural folks for forty days and make a visit to Sabarimala in Kerala. Motivations have changed so do the villagers’ outlook.

The missing element in the process of these developments is sustainability. "In the middle of an ocean of green paddy fields all around my little village in itself was a spectacular piece of nature’s grace two decades back. Today it pains to witness the missing paddy fields amidst human habitation." shares with Miss. Rwihali Brahma, a travel executuve working with Askon Tours and Travels who hails from a vilage in Assam. So is the case of millions of destinations around the world. Their villages apart atleast their dreams be fulfilled!

Onus also lies with the governments to help in not only the sustainability of the rural destinations but also the rural folks. One of the best ways to sustain the rural folks is to help them travel, support them to see India which they are equally entitled to. One of the revolutionary initiations in this line has been taken by IRCTC by launching its ‘Bharat Darshan’ travel packages. Insiders although say one would hardly find villagers getting their share of chances to have Bharat darshan since urban middle class can easily access to the services and they are in waiting too. Sixth pay commission with pay hike has satiated domestic as well as outbound travel. There is a huge section of employees now travelling to far off places in the country from north to south and even to north eastern states. Middle class in the recent years has suddenly found in their accounts the much needed ‘disposable income’ which they can spend for their vacationing. It speaks good of tourism  growth and for dynamics in the economy. Such an attempt needs to be instigated in rural India in order to enhance their disposable incomes so that their long awaited dreams of having Bharat darshan are fulfilled in the near future.

Stakeholders in the tourism industry in India must work towards these objectives. Risk taking entrepreneurs should venture into this bottom of the pyramid with innovative travelling projects. If shampoo was a product meant for high end customers in eighties bottled and sold, innovative product development with ‘out of the box’ distribution channels by C K Ranganathan the sachet king of FMCG tapped the market at the bottom of the pyramid. It is evident from CavinKares’s unimaginable growth from Rs15,000 to Rs 950 crore  between 1983 and 2010. A phenomenal growth which vows its credit to the bottom of the pyramid of India. Similar creative start ups in  travel industry for the vilagewallas will surely give a new fillip and definitely raise money for the operators. It is also evident from certain rural destinations that pilgrimage tour businesses are on the run in an unorgansed manner. There are small players in the rural market who are organizing trips to pilgrimage destinations across the country but to the very conventional destinations like Varnasi, sirdi, Tirupati, Nasik, Hardwar-Rishikesh, Puri, Sabarimala, Vaishnodevi, Pushkar, Amritsar, Ajmer, Veilankani, Bodhgaya etc.  The rural markets for these pilgrimage spots are mainly the neighbouring regions. If the cost factor is worked upon, it would change the way the world looks at the Indian rural market especially in tourism activities.

The general perception of the purchasing power of the villagers being low may partly be true. But there is also a section of the population in rural India involved in petty businesses and harvesting good crops. This section is otherwise very potential market in itself. A group of five from Mudhol, a remote village in north Karnataka was found vacationing in Goa last summer. One of them Mr. Ravi shared, “We often plan for a vacation trip every summer, last time we had been to Ooty and next year probably we would go to a hill station somewhere in north India. Such groups who plan their own trips from villages are growing in numbers in the recent years. Given proper guidance and motivated to participate in organized travel business, this will have a multiplier effect on others as well. Now the question is, who will do this job of motivating and organizing? Certainly here comes the role of catalyst organizations especially enterprises, intermediaries and the local bodies.

The responsible task of developing rural tourism business may be initiated by the stakeholders in a coordinated approach. Firstly, it is necessary look at villages as markets for tourism businesses and secondly to create villages as destinations. Later aspect is being currently addressed by the Ministry of Tourism with the support of UNDP under the flagship project of endogenous tourism . It is also being promoted under the programme ‘Explore Rural India’. Its high time to see the things from the other angle as well i.e., to tap the rural markets for tourism businesses.