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The good news is that the Finance Ministry is on a cost-cutting mission. The bad news is the mission is not as aggressive as it should be...

September 23, 1999 12:00 AM IST

3 min read

The good news is that the Finance Ministry is on a cost-cutting mission. The bad news is the mission is not as aggressive as it should be in the circumstances. It took a while for the Finance Ministry to discover that the Union Tourism Ministry8217;s network of offices abroad was a waste of the tax-payer8217;s money.

The Finance Ministry should not be congratulated for finding out what everyone has known for decades; it should be congratulated for actually trying to do something about it. The proposal to shut down all but ten of the so-called tourist offices can be called sensible, if not bold or sufficiently drastic. Even ten offices are excessive when there are so many more efficient and cheaper ways of generating tourist traffic. However, it was a brave beginning given that Union government ministries have probably never seen serious cost-cutting exercises before. A problem was identified: tourist offices were not justified on cost-benefit grounds. The solution was simple: close them. So far sogood.

Predictably, the Tourism Ministry rose to defend its turf. Its arguments for retaining its empire intact are not particularly accurate or persuasive. The claim that India is on a par with a tourist economy like Thailand8217;s is not reflected at all in the annual figures and is absurd. It would be hard to point to 8220;sterling8221; contributions by the Tourism department. If anything, it deserves a prize for the proliferation of unproductive tourist offices abroad and its audacity in demanding more funds for more offices. In the face of the facts, there was no need for the Finance Ministry to back down and agree to an audit before implementing its cost-cutting plan. It has fallen into the classic trap of creating more work and more jobs in the effort of cutting out the waste. An emergency audit is being conducted to investigate the decline in tourism from Germany and the US. Why restrict this make-work exercise to those countries when the audit could just as well look into the causes of zero tourism fromPatagonia and Iceland. It is a complete farce and waste of more money and time to do an audit at this stage.

The central government can safely close down all but a handful of its tourist offices abroad. Even the handful should be put on notice of closure if performance targets are not met. For the rest, let state governments drum up business and give the private sector contracts to carry out specific tourism promotion tasks. There is no need for the central government to be in the business of promoting tourism when others can do the job better and at lower cost. The government has got to find savings by cutting back on unproductive expenditure; the overheads and staff costs for the bulk of tourist offices abroad fall squarely in that category. Government offices are just not cut out for competitive and demanding jobs such as tourism calls for. Common complaints are out-of-date information, shabby brochures, staff who are indifferent, if not downright discourteous and administrations which move at a glacialpace in response to new business opportunities. Tourist offices end up as little more than holiday postings for Ministry staff.

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