Main Article Content

Abstract

The spirit of India resides in her villages and those living in cities and towns have their roots in rural life, its art and rituals. Indian villages have pastoral beauty and touching simplicity, offer fresh comforting breezes and lavish openness. They are the reservoirs of traditional knowledge about traditional ways of life, arts and craft will be attracted to visit rural India if the concept of rural tourism is marketed well. The development of a strong platform around the concept of village tourism is definitely useful for a country like India, where almos74% of the population resides in its more than half million villages. Rural Tourism or Village tourism stands for showcasing the ethnic arts, crafts, culture and lifestyle in its traditional settings, and providing a platform for tourists to experience this. Village tourism or rural tourism have various form of tourism such as- agriculture or farm tourism, nature tourism, heritage, pilgrim tourism, adventure tourism, culture tourism etc. Indian villages have potential of all such form of tourism. Though, rural tourism may be relatively a new concept in India but in European countries it started as early as 1950. In France, agro-tourism started in 1950. Similarly, rural tourism in Spain started in the eighties. In United Kingdom, rural tourism started in mid-seventies. Overall in Europe 2-5 per cent farmers are directly or indirectly engaged in rural tourism. In India, rural tourism started in mid-nineties. The scope of rural tourism is wider and it is promoting wide range of rural economy. However, there are lots of areas needs to be worked out to strengthen the potentiality of rural tourism. In this context the paper will look into the potentiality of rural tourism for rural economy and its future for sustainable development of India.

Article Details