Grassroutes Journeys to India`s Heartland – Dreams of Dusty Roads with Inir Pinheiro – 2/2

Let me also elaborate further marketing and product development of tourism in the village

While designing the marketing for each village, special emphasis is paid on the uniqueness of the villagers’ lifestyles, cuisine, culture, knowledge systems, and biodiversity. The marketing of villages to various target groups also includes sensitization of village realities & sensitivities of each target group, prior to their journey.

Here is also quality control and monitoring of tourism in the village, to ensure that the various tourists groups get a certain quality of services, while monitoring ensures that the ill effects of tourism are minimized. The monitoring enables us to modify our marketing (in term of sensitizing tourists groups), as well as develop systems which would ensure that a clash of civilizations does not occur.

Hence, each village destination is an independent functioning entity, where in the village tourism committees are responsible for running tourism in their village, ensuring a certain standard. Grassroutes after developing the village, would be marketing these village tourism destinations and the social department of Grassroutes would monitor the tourism standard and dynamics in these villages periodically.

The above is the function of Grassroutes.

Q: How does it work out for a client?
Inir: The client contacts us thru our website, or our phone numbers. A booking is accepted at least 4 days prior. The village tourism clerk, who is an employee of the village tourism committee, is informed of the number of clients and their specific needs. Based on which families are appointed to look after the various hospitality needs of the client. For every a group of up 5-6 people 3 families are appointed to look after the cooking, housekeeping and as a guide. The village guide is the tourists interface between the village and the tourists.

On the specified date, the tourist meets a village guide at a pre designated place to which the tourists are given directions on how to reach there. The village guide then takes the tourists into the village. After 15 days of any tourists visit, the payments are done to the village families involved in tourism, against the feedback obtained from the tourists.

Our target groups for marketing comprise of corporate houses, college students & various youth organizations, families and friends, and international tourists.

Till date over 93% of our clients have been domestic clients coming from the cities of Mumbai (aka Bombay) and Pune.

Grassroutes has its own marketing team, which creates awareness of Grassroutes rural tourism initiatives. Each village is designed such that it’s capable of handling tourists’ groups’ number 1 – 40. We limit the number of tourists in the village at any given point of time, to ensure that the tourists footprints left behind are minimal.

Q: What are the benefits for the village community?
Inir: Sustainable livelihood opportunities both direct and indirect arising due to responsible tourism. We conservatively estimate a direct average annual inflow of over 5- 6 lakhs per village (after 3 years of intervention). For example, in Purushwadi 50 of the 109 households have been directly involved in tourism, and have benefited with a 20 – 30 % increase in annual household income. These villages have an average annual household income of Rs. 12000- 16000.

As we move from the experimental phase to a full roll out, we conservatively estimate that at least 50 household would benefit with an increase in annual income by 4000 – 5000 a year. This is besides the village common fund of Rs. 2 -3 lakhs per year.

As far as creation of auxiliary sustainable livelihood opportunities, this range from increased poultry production, increase in kitchen gardens, marketing window for agricultural goods like grains, medicinal plants, and processed village food like pickles. These are s few examples.

Further boosting the local economies, tourism has a great multiplier effect for the local economy. The government of India has a 2.1 multiplier for income in tourism, and 1.8 multiplier of employment in tourism. 

In increase in employment days, last financial year, over 700 person days of employment were created due to tourism in the village.  We conservatively estimate a 700 – 900 person days of employment being created in each village annually, thru the Grassroutes model of responsible rural tourism.

Then there is conservation of local culture, traditions, lifestyles & knowledge systems. The locals realize that the tourists relish and enjoy their local culture and traditions and love to hear out local stories and local treatments. There is a sense of pride in the villagers as they share their lifestyles and traditions with the tourists.

This has lead to a revival of traditional culture and knowledge systems in the village.

Next conservation of biodiversity, the villagers are given an incentive to conserve their biodiversity, they by showcasing their beautiful environments to tourist, further as tourism provides people with a supplementary income, there is lesser stress on the environment.

Q: You describe your undertaking as "responsible rural tourism", can you explain?
Inir: The Grassroutes model of responsible tourism is local community centric, the local community owns, manages and runs quality hospitality services in their village show casing their unique lifestyles, knowledge systems, biodiversity and traditions.

We claim to undertake responsible tourism due to the following:
We don’t own any property in these villages, rather it’s the villagers who rent out their homes, or land to accommodate tourists.

The village community has been empowered to managed and run tourism in the village. We specify a minimum quality standard, however it’s the village which decides what can and cannot be done, e.g., in the current projects, the endogenous community (Hindu mahadeo koli) are non vegetarians, infact their
local preparation of chicken is much sort after by tourists, however, whenever there is a festival, non vegetarian is not served. This is communicated by the village to the tourists.

The local community has been empowered to manage tourism in the village. This  means that the disbursal of the money is done by the village tourism committee, ensuring a inclusive process of decision making. All tourists are sensitized prior to them embarking on a Grassroutes journey, especially with the dos and don’ts.

The footprint of the tourists are minimized as far as possible. In fact when tourists leave the village, the village guides, pack up all the garbage generated during the stay and hand it over to the guest, requesting them to dispose the waste, when they reach the city.

Tourism is meant as an augmenting source of income, hence, the village socio cultural dynamics should not change drastically due to tourism, and hence,

Grassroutes limits the inflow of tourists, to not more than 40 tourists at any given point of time, per village, at the same time limiting the annual inflow to approx 1100 footfalls. This is further supplemented with periodic monitoring checks in the village.

Q: What are the encounters with basic living like, what does it do to the city dwellers?
Inir: Grassroutes promotes and celebrates local lifestyles, cultures, traditions, biodiversities, economies and knowledge systems. Simply put in when in Rome do as Romans do... when in a village, do as villagers do. This means getting a hands on experience of village lifestyles, such as daily chores: like chopping wood, cooking, collecting water, further livelihoods like farming, cattle rearing.

Witnessing knowledge systems: listening to the villagers share their legends, understating of various plants and insects, how they interact and could be used for medicine.

Local cuisine, eating organic, locally grown, cooked over fire wood and  mouth savoring food, which is seasonal.

Local village environments, exploring the village landscape which could include treks, a swim in the nearby river or pond, or just get a nice beautiful place to sit, under a tree and get lost in thought.

Local site seeing: India is filled with wonders, be in historical, natural, or religious. Grassroutes encourages visitors to discover these hidden wonders of India, e.g. there is a Banyan tree 55 Km from Purushwadi, which is over 1.5 acres big. It’s a living forest, known only to the locals. Or a hill rumored to be the place where a famed dacoit hid all booty. The legend is so strong, that the nearby village has stopped the local government from building a road thru it in fear that the loot if found would be the governments. Each and every village in India has many an interesting story.

Local festivals and celebrations: get involved in the local festivals and local celebrations.

Q: Are there any blog, web sites, forums where the city dwellers post their photos, reflections, comments about their experiences in the village?
Inir: With respect to blogs and other forums, we are in process of launching a Face book page on Grassroutes

Q: You say your goal is to discover, conserve, and promote rural environment communities, lifestyles and economy. Can you explain your innovative approach and reflect on your experience so far?
Inir: A lot of ventures and organizations across India and the world are looking to discover, conserve, and promote rural environment communities, lifestyles and economy. Grassroutes approach is different from most of them due to that we are looking at developing a network of at least 200 village tourism destinations across India, where in tourism is owned, managed and run by the local community by 2020.

We concentrate predominantly on the domestic markets for our customers (93 -95%) of our client has been domestic clients. Our aim is building a triple bottom line sustainable venture (i.e. profit, people and environment positive ) venture.

Q: There is something "Gandhian" in this approach about the "village of my dream"  -  going back to the soil and nurture it so that the productivity increases. Do you intend to expand you undertaking further and in which direction?
Inir: Mahatma Gandhi believed that the only way for the world to sustain is thru rural economies. In the essence that each village should be a self sustained unit. In my journeys so far there is a lot of depth to what he said, especially in wake of the recent global financial fiascos.

We see the need for a self sustenance in villages in rural India, because India still lives in her villages.

Q: Modern technology may allow for the first time to bring into reality the dream village of Gandhi. Such a village would be  high tech, self reliant, sustainable and will provide resident a high quality of live. Is there any movement or experimental projects in this respect in India…?
Inir: There have been many such approaches across India since the turn of the 20th century. But perhaps this could be a subject for another feature.

Inir, thank you very much this insight.

Image: Encounters with basic living in Purushwadi - from inir`s Photo Gallery