INDIA FINDS DOMESTIC TOURISM ISN'T ALWAYS A GOOD THING

[Even though the number of international tourists to many other locations in India has shown modest growth, for India’s size and extraordinary attractions, the nation continues to be a tourism dwarf. According to a government report, in 2013 India received just under seven million tourists, representing 0.64 percent of the world’s international tourists, who spent 1.59 percent of what the world’s international tourists spent that year.]

By Manu Joseph

Darjeeling - the land of thunderbolt.

PANAJI, Goa — He travels a great distance from the grim hinterlands of the nation to the state of Goa on the southwest coast to see her as though she were a monument. He walks behind her, saying several times, “Excuse me, a picture?” He wants a selfie with her. If she consents, there is much handshaking. Then he goes through the photos with a sudden serious expression.

Some days, as he lies on the beach with a beer bottle in hand and observes the foreign white woman, there is the animal melancholy in his eyes of watching something unattainable. And he says things about her body to her that he and his like-minded friends, of whom there are usually many, find hilarious.

In the tourism department they call him “the cheap domestic tourist.” Economically worthless because he spends so little, often living in buses and cars, he has begun to travel for leisure more often than a person of his means used to. The tourism industry regards him as an adversary of the high-value tourist, but he is much more — a mascot of the fact that India makes the simplest joys of street life difficult for women.

There was a time when the sheer hardships of India contributed to its charms as a tourist destination for the West. But the recent increase in reports of rapes in India has, more than the nation’s many other horrors, diminished its attraction. The government, however, refuses to see the heart of the problem.

Over the past few years, there has been a decline in the number of foreign tourists in Goa. This high season, too, has been dismal. Tourism officials are still working on the numbers, but they told me that their guess was that there had been a drop of 20 to 30 percent in the number of foreign tourists.

Because Russians form the largest contingent among foreign visitors, the officials blame the situation on the fall of the ruble. Every year in the recent past, officials have blamed one global event or the other. But now there is also a growing fear in the hospitality industry that the decline in high-spending tourists might be more than a temporary trend. And that India might be the adversary of its own tourism. Apart from the sex crimes, there are other law-and-order problems, poor infrastructure, terrifying traffic and pollution.

Since 2012, the Taj Mahal, in the northern city of Agra, has witnessed a decline in the number of foreign tourists. In 2014, the drop was 6.8 percent from the previous year. The tourism sector of Agra has blamed the rising crime rate in the region.

Even though the number of international tourists to many other locations in India has shown modest growth, for India’s size and extraordinary attractions, the nation continues to be a tourism dwarf. According to a government report, in 2013 India received just under seven million tourists, representing 0.64 percent of the world’s international tourists, who spent 1.59 percent of what the world’s international tourists spent that year.

I asked the tourism minister of Goa, Dilip Parulekar, how he planned to solve the problem of harassment of women on the beaches. He said nothing. As a politician he could not afford to speak ill of the poor.

An executive with the five-star hotel Vivanta By Taj said that this year, as has been the case the past few years, the resort has been saved by somewhat affluent Indians. “They are demanding, they don’t go out much, they spend most of the time in the resort and make us run around, they bargain for everything,” he said, “but we need them now.”

Until about a decade ago, the middle-class Indian tourist felt discriminated against by Goa’s hotels and restaurants, which preferred to serve foreigners because they spoke pleasantly to waiters, spent more and tipped more. Now the middle-class Indian is precious.

But the fact is that she is probably even more repulsed than the foreigners by “the cheap domestic tourist,” because she understands his every word.

Follow Manu Joseph, author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Facebook.

@ The New York Times