Brand Himachal Tourism hit by babu’s desi slogans

Many here feel the state’s best known brand ‘Himachal Tourism’ has been neglected by  two weird slogans which have been much publicised by the state’s tourism department .

Instead of focussing more on developing tourism facilities in existing popular tourist towns like Shimla , Manali , Dharamsala , Dalhousie , Kufri , Narkanda , Chail , Kasauli , Kullu among many others places .

Instead of improving roads , developing parking lots and taking effective steps to stop the growing fleecing of tourists by touts .

The feeling is that the tourism department in recent times seemed to concentrate more on two slogans which many observers say made little sense .

They were ‘Har Gaon Ki Kahani’ and ‘Ghar Ghar Ki Kahani’. Many experts feel every effort was made to popularise them at the cost of the real tourism development which brings in precious revenue for the hill folk .

Even though many disagreed and laughed privately at these concepts nobody dared dismiss them openly

So for years any tourism talk, conference , press release  repeated these catch phrases over and over like a parrot . And everyone agreed and clapped meekly .

Bored lower division babus were prodded and pushed to find a story(kahani) in unknown villages and houses of the state but with little success .

Often no story was found , or a story was simply invented and concocted just to promote these two jingles .

These slogans often confused tourists particularly foreigners and non-hindi speaking visitors who struggled to even pronounce these sankritised titles .

Many tourism experts remain surprised why more efforts were not made in recent years by the government to attract more high-end spending tourists to visit the state .

Instead many believe a lot of energy, time and money was spent on bizarre pursuits like , ‘Har Gaon Ki Kahani’ and ‘Ghar Ghar Ki Kahani’.

They may have made some sense to the low-end , budget pilgrimage tourist visiting the temple towns of the Himachal foothills .

But they often made no sense to young , corporate and professional holidaymakers who visit Shimla and Manali in large numbers .

It is this class which spends far more here and brings in valuable revenue to the fund starved state , these slogans seem far away from their world !