Training will also be provided to residents who will be offering rooms to foreigners under the Delhi government’s bed and breakfast scheme. House owners will be briefed on how to be more tourist friendly so that the visitors can enjoy their overall stay in the Capital. “House owners will be provided hospitality-related training and be briefed about the Indian tourism scenario. Most visitors generally question their hosts about the city so they will be provided information on the golden triangle Delhi, Agra and Jaipur as well as the other places tourists should visit in Delhi,” said an official.

A major focus group of the training will be taxi drivers, who will be provided certificates after they complete the same. “We need to promote the “atithi devo bhave” spirit. These drivers will be taught basic conversational English, communication skills, upkeep and road worthiness of vehicles, first aid and safety management and common courtesy like opening doors for women passengers,” said an ITDC official.

Auto drivers will be another focus group. Admitting that most people prefer to use autos instead of taxis as they are more economical, officials said the biggest challenge would lie in ensuring auto drivers did not fleece the foreign visitors. “A proposal has been put up where auto drivers will be paid Rs 200 per day for participating in the training programme, which is for 14 hours. We have also approached Delhi Police in this regard. But since the training is a voluntary scheme, it is yet to be seen how many drivers will actually participate in it,” said an official.

Dhaba owners are another group being looked at. As well as security guards at monuments and staff of smaller hotels in the city. According to senior ITDC officials, all these categories of workers would be imparted training so they become more familiar with dealing with foreign visitors. Guards at monuments, for example, would be trained to help visitors if they appear lost. They will also be taught how to answer frequently asked questions from visitors. Security guards at Metro stations will also be made part of the programme.

A few years ago, the tourism ministry launched the “atithi devo bhavah” campaign at IGI airport wherein taxi drivers were trained in areas of hygiene and conduct, behaviour, integrity, as well as safety and security for foreign visitors. Those who completed the training were given a quality sticker for their vehicles so visitors could distinguish them from other taxi drivers. However, the much publicised campaign soon fizzled out as taxi drivers lost interest.

In fact, the sector saw a 7.6 per cent increase in foreign exchange earnings in April.

India is promoting itself as a top tourist destination. Road shows are held in countries such as Japan, Singapore, Thailand, UK and US to allay fears, following last year’s Mumbai terror attacks.

The hospitality sector, too, has got together to attract foreign visitors. Hotels, airlines and travel agencies are pooling in their resources under the Visit India 2009 programme, offering free tickets and discounted accommodation to travellers.

Subhash Goel, chairman of the Indian Chamber of Commerce, Aviation, Tourism and Hospitality Committee, said: “Our original target was 20 per cent growth, but I don’t think we’ll achieve that because we’ve lost the first three or four months.

“But definitely, we’ll have a 10 to 15 per cent growth, compared to last year and we are confident of it.”

Despite the optimistic outlook, tourist arrivals fell in April on-year, as foreigners remain apprehensive about security. The global H1N1 outbreak is also expected to adversely affect the industry.

“We are requesting for the government of India to exempt us from the high taxes… just like what they did with the software industry. Tourism sector can also create millions of jobs,” said Goel.

India’s annual tourism growth has always been much higher than the world average of 6 per cent. The industry is expected to generate more than US$275 billion by 2018 and generate 40 million new jobs.

Even though there is no doubt that most foreign visitors fall in love with the exotic and vibrant hue of India, they are also heard complaining about problems such as dishonest taxi drivers, overpriced hotel rooms and unhygienic conditions.

If the government pays a little attention to these problems, it would go a long way in ensuring a truly “incredible experience” of India.

New Delhi — From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail, Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2009 11:57AM EDT

Here is a decorating tip from the Indian capital: A few throw rugs, a portrait of granddad on the wall and some bright tile in the kitchen can turn the darkest, draftiest national monument into a cozy home.

Delhi, the seat of a succession of empires over the past 2,500 years, is embarrassingly rich in ancient monuments. There is one about every 100 metres or so, in the exhausted estimation of the country’s superintending archaeologist, Ashok Kumar Sinha.

The city is also home to tens of thousands of homeless people, and millions more who are desperately poor. Many of the otherwise homeless have made the reasonable assessment that the stout marble walls of the tombs and shrines and mausoleums that litter the city make a much nicer home, especially in monsoon season, than the sidewalk.

Some seek only temporary shelter. But others such as nine families living inside a federally protected monument called the Atgah Khan tomb, built in 1566, are so thoroughly ensconced that they can produce title deeds going back generations. They have plastered the walls, had the crypt wired to run the television and installed a fine kitchen, with wood cupboards built into the handy arched recesses.

The cash-strapped, understaffed and overwhelmed Archaeological Survey of India wages a continual battle to evict the squatters and end encroachments.

“We cannot make even basic repairs because people are living there,” said Mr. Sinha, the ASI’s superintending archeologist.

The ASI is responsible for the 3,684 sites deemed protected monuments by the central government, of which 174 are in Delhi; state and city governments are responsible for thousands more across the country. Scores more are simply not protected at all, Mr. Sinha added; the sheer wealth of heritage sites in India has eroded the value of all but a few, such as the much showcased Taj Majal.

Encroachments, as the ASI deems them, are the bane of Mr. Sinha’s existence. He quickly sketched the neighbourhood around the Atgah Khan tomb on a notepad: Down a lane to the right lie the ruins of another 700-year-old Moghul tomb, which until recently had 45 families living in it. The preservators managed to move the people out, but they cannot persuade the city to protect the surrounding land, so goats still graze and residents of the crowded basti , or poor neighbourhood, all around it dry their laundry around the tomb. Fifty metres down another lane stands a Moghul tomb over which the city and its own archaeological authority are embroiled in a lengthy lawsuit. The nine families living inside, who string their TV wire over the crumbling stone buttresses, insist it has been in their family for 300 years. Other neighbours nod knowingly at that claim; that’s the usual argument of squatters. At the end of that lane stands a massive dargah , a Sufi shrine and mosque where, in the course of evicting more encroachers last month, the archeologists uncovered access to a huge 800-year-old step well, still fed by a spring, that once secretly served the Sufi pir , or leader. It had been covered over for at least a century by a series of small homes erected against the sturdy walls of the shrine.

“Targeting these people, making them as friends, that is the most difficult thing for the Archaeological Survey of India,” Mr. Sinha said. “Heritage gives nothing to them. Heritage is only a curse for them. Unless and until heritage gives something to them, no amount of lecturing or pamphlets is going to help.”

And indeed, the ASI has few friends around the tombs. “My grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather was born here” said a stout resident of a house on the Atgah Khan tomb. She, like all the others, refused to give her name, wary of attracting any more attention to her family. “It wasn’t something we bought, this place to live was given to the people who took care of the dargah . And if they didn’t want us to live here, they should have thought about that before they gave us electricity and water” (It is not clear whether the municipal government, in a fit of misguided benevolence, brought utilities into the tomb or whether these were pirated by local operators who make a business of this and are rarely distinguished, by residents, from actual city employees.) And, she pointed out, all of the occupants have been paying house taxes for years, the receipts of which they intend to furnish as evidence in a court case to oppose their eviction.

The ASI promises to resettle the people it evicts, and puts up most of the money; the Delhi municipal government is involved, too. But the families living in the tomb say the site proposed for them is kilometres away when their businesses, their children’s schools, their community and their history are all in this neighbourhood. And they are not budging. “Yes, we hang our laundry there, and yes, our children play cricket in the tomb, and yes, we have built a kitchen [around the area where the sarcophagus is housed],” said another resident, a young woman in a bright orange kurta . “But we haven’t caused damage. And anyway, we live here. Its always been our home.”

In fact, of course, the daily living activities of several hundred people, counting those living in the tomb and those whose houses are built up against the surrounding wall, do cause damage to the monument. Mr. Sinha laments the loss of mosaic work and historic engravings, as well as the loss of the original character of the building, through plaster and whitewash, and the more esoteric loss of the appearance intended by its architect, who no doubt meant the imposing domed tomb to stand in an open area, not blotted out in a snarl of slum dwellings. The imposing two-storey Atgah Khan tomb is not visible from more than three metres away in any direction.

The ASI wages a constant battle; at most of the monuments, squatters and encroachers are back within weeks of being cleared, and often get court injunctions that tie up evictions for years. The department’s budget does not extend to the kind of staff who would be needed to properly protect, let alone restore, all of the many sites on its list. Humayun’s Tomb, for example, one of India’s best-known monuments, which attracts more than 100,000 visitors a year, has only one ASI officer (a junior one, Mr. Sinha noted) and some untrained staff, to handle tourists, infrastructure, conservation, accounts and security. “Its not humanly possible,” the archeologist said.

He would like to see the area around the tomb, and the Sufi dargahsites, developed with high-quality souvenir stands and tea shops, something to employ neighbourhood residents and give them the sense that the preservation of monuments has an economic benefit. But there is no staff or time for that, he said.

Instead, efforts at the tomb have focused on driving out the dozens of people who were living in the 700-year-old structures all around it. The ASI is also engaged in an ongoing battle with the pro-development forces in economically booming Delhi. Recently, for example, the city wanted to put in an above-ground metro line next to the majestic Qutab Minar, a 73-metre carved-brick minaret that is one of the city’s main landmarks. It compares roughly to running a monorail line along the front lawn of Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Mr. Sinha spent months fighting that plan.

Local residents, the city government, everyone sees the preservators “as a villain,” he said. “But some things must be protected.”

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) has decided that each tiger carcass will be deep-frozen and studied by an independent team to investigate the cause of death.

The special team will include an official from the NTCA, a state vet and a non-governmental tiger expert nominated by the chief wildlife warden of each state.

The authority, constituted by the prime minister in 2005, hopes to bring transparency in the way tiger deaths are dealt with. The team will also treat injured tigers.

Since November last year, at least five tigers have died at world heritage site Kaziranga National Park in Assam and over six in Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh, with others deaths reported across the country.

R N Mehrotra, chief wildlife warden of Ranthambore National Park, told the Press Association: “Any support will be helpful. States have their constraints. The investigation is a complex issue since you cannot single out any one cause for tiger deaths.

“Definitely there is a lack of personnel, and the lack of funds is another constraint. We cannot exclude the increasing demand for tiger products, poaching and other wildlife crimes.”

It was claimed that territorial combats were the cause of the tiger deaths in Kaziranga, but investigation reportedly found that poisoning had caused some deaths too.

NTCA member-secretary Rajesh Gopal said: “A number of reports we received stated tigers died as a result of mutual combat. While tigers can die in combat with each other, it is unusual that so many would have died due to that.”

The authority will provide funds for freezing and generator facilities, and will take charge of conducting post-mortem examinations on the tiger carcasses.

Flying Returns members will be required to present Air India boarding card along with valid Flying Returns membership card at Ashoka Hotels in Jammu, New Delhi, Bharatpur, Jaipur,Bhopal,Patna,Ranchi,Bhubaneshwar, Puri, Itanagar, Guwahati, Pondicherry and Mysore to avail the discount on room tariff. Frequent Flyer Programme membership card is to be produced at the ITDC restaurants for discount on F&B services, for a table up to six persons

Sai Baba Shrine the most popular pilgrim’s destination place in Nasik gets a lot of visitors round the year. People from all over India and around the world often visit this place. If you are planning to visit the Shirdi here are some tips that would help you get a good darshan. The article also has some suggestions for the Sai baba Management.

The Maharashtra Government had taken over the Shirdi temple complex and is managing since 2004.

Once you reach Nasik depending on the budget looks out for a good hotel. Mobile phones, Bags, Ladies hand bags, cameras are not allowed in the Sai Baba Shrine because of security concerns. Hence it is advisable to keep all the stuffs in your hotel. It is also advisable to leave your slippers, shoes, sandals in your hotel room.

Beware if you leave your footwear and/or your mobiles with the shops (normally from where we buy the flowers / garlands) in the vicinity of the shrine entrance the chance of you getting them back is grim. By the time you complete the darshan and you exit the shrine you may be surprised that the shop along with your footwear and /or mobiles has disappeared into thin air. No one will help you in this situation the guards, the shop around that are still visible, take my word no one. I have personally experienced it.
Hence to be on safer sides do not trust anyone, best option would be to keep your stuffs in your hotel room assuming you have selected a good hotel.

Shirdi has become a popular tourist spot and a money making institution for the Shirdi Management. Since it is the government who is handling the administration their behavior towards devotees is similar to what you experience when you visit any government offices. The babus treat devotees as if they are third class citizens.

The Crowd is huge and hence requires good management; this however is no excuse for the bad treatment that devotees get especially from the over-zealous staffs. The devotees are shouted at and even pushed. It takes anywhere from 2 hours or more to get near the Sai baba statue and even before you come face to face with Sai baba, you are immediately shouted and pushed aside by the overzealous Staff. It seems that the Maharashtra government is more interested in getting many people inside so as the revenue generate by donations keep increasing.

If you have influence in the government or if you are a VIP person you can easily get a good darshan at Shirdi, rest all fall under the slum-dog category.

If you dont like to be treated like a slumdog, There are VIP passes available but, You can only source the passes from high ranking govt officilas, IAS etc, with govt stamp on the letter. There are two kinds of passes. One is a visitor’s pass which will save you from joining a general queue but still have to be in a selective queue and the other is the aarti pass which requires the name of the aarti written on the letter itself , then there is no waiting period for that.

So much for Governments Interference.

With proper management and giving some respect to the devotees the environment of Shirdi shrine could easily be changed. Here are some suggestions and hope the Maharashtra government takes note of it.

1. Security personals should be polite and show respect to devotes. They must realize that without pilgrims there would be nothing to manage and thus they may have no jobs! Sai Baba provides them with their livelihood. More over with a polite gesture the devotee would not even mind completing the darshan quickly.
2.  It would be good if the security personals them self’s chant Jai Sai Ram and use that when interacting with devotees.
3. Using the words please, thank you, jai sai ram, jai sai baba etc. could make a huge difference.
4. Staff shouting at devotees demanding them to move ahead should completely be stopped, on the contrary why does that happen? It is because the single lane suddenly turns into a highway. There are devotees who have a family and some members get left behind they have no other option but to wait. But the staff wants them to get darshan and to get out immediately. This attitude is simple not acceptable. It is a temple and need to be like a temple, peaceful and chanting of sai ram rather than staff people shouting around and behaving as if it’s a fish market.
5. Staff shouting makes, many people angry some do shout back at the staff instead the staff enter in to an oral fight, why can’t the staff simple say “sorry sir. Can you please move forward” and at least try to understand the problem the devotees may be facing the devotee may be standing there as his family, children’s might have been left behind.
6. When the devotee queue reaches close to sai baba statue having a staff in each row that can say group people together will not only help a family get sai baba darshan together but also clear off the queue quickly.

The management of Sai Baba temple should realize that if they cause inconvenience, man-handle, push, or shout at the devotee they are doing the same to Sai Baba. If the staff treats each devotee as they treat the VIP personals, which would really make a difference and they (the staff) in turn will also get a lot of respect and blessing from the devotees and in turn from Sai Baba.

If you have any suggestion on how the devotees can get a good darshan at the same time making environment peaceful, just put it down on using the comment box below.

Source : http://www.littleabout.com/2009/04/06/a-visit-to-the-shirdi-sai-baba-shrine-in-nasik/