Tourism is one of the industries known to bring income to a nation and should therefore be controlled with a lot of concern. However, if the necessary management is not carried out on the industry, then it can result to negative impacts within the nation, despite the fact that its income generating. Therefore, just like other nations, India is negatively affected by tourism.
The tourism industry is seasonal and therefore results to economic distortions. Therefore, the individuals that major in working for the tourism industry face the challenge of unemployment during the low seasons. As a result, this affects their financial situation as the people try to put up with the rates of inflation in the country. The general impact to the economy is that an increase in the rates of unemployment results to a corresponding increase in the rates of inflation due to the increase in the dependency ratio. As well, the variations in the seasons of the tourism industry results to social unrest since the tourism areas are faced with the possibility of immigrants made to work in such areas. Therefore, this calls for the locals to adapt to the new social environment which might come along with cultures that they are not used to.
As well, the tourism industry in India has led to the erosion of culture especially in the coastal regions. The warm beaches attract thousands of tourists from all over the world. Such tourists might find it hard to practice the culture of the Indian people and therefore, they end up influencing the Indians into their culture. It is easy for the Indians to be influenced into the tourists cultures because their main aim is to entertain the tourists in order to ensure that they attract as many as possible hence making more income. The effect of culture erosion is therefore transferred to the people of the interior of India by workers who return home once the tourism high season has ended.
Tourism in India has also led to the accumulation of social amenities in specific areas whereby the local government has no much control. Most of the tourism attraction sites are normally in the remote areas. Therefore, given the fact that tourism is an industry of national interest, and then the government takes the initiative of ensuring that those areas have good infrastructure and other social amenities such as hospitals and expensive hotels. Hence, other areas remain underdeveloped because the government’s focus is on the tourism attraction sites that are known to bring income in the country. This leads to unequal distribution of resources in the country.
Tourism in India has increased the standards of living in the tourist attraction sites. Such places are characterized by expensive hotels and other services made to bring income to the country. In addition, most of the people in those areas are low income earners and find it difficult to cope up with the high cost of living especially during the high seasons. The reason to this is that the natives in the tourism industry are not always from the neighboring regions of the tourist attraction site but from all over the country. Hence, it cannot be concluded that the tourism wealth is accumulated in one area.
Concisely, the tourism industry has brought several negative impacts to India which circulates around unemployment, increasing standards of living to the erosion of culture and unequal distribution of resources. Despite having these impacts, the tourism industry is still profitable to India, and, therefore, ways should be put across in order to minimize all the negative impacts that the industry brings.
