VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

The United Nations World Tourism Organization  (UNWTO) has declared 27 th September as World Tourism Day. The day serves to remind us that in this modern world, tourism is one of the most important human activities by way of numbers of persons employed and revenue generated. Every year countries throughout the world celebrate this day with great fanfare and rededicate themselves to improving their tourism industry. The theme for this year is “1 Billion Tourists, 1 Billion Opportunities” . 1,000,000,000 international tourists Now, keep your calculator, pencil and paper handy … we are entering number land. In 2012 for the first time a billion people packed their bags and went travelling internationally.  Take a moment to understand this number. One billion is equal to a 1,000 million, or 100 Crores. This is 20 times the population of divided Andhra Pradesh and around 80% of our nation’s population. With a world population now a shade over 7 billion people this mean...

To read the article as it appeared in the Times of India, please click on this link Cultural genocide in our hills or read the original word document below Our children speak the language and imbibe the culture that we (and our living room flat TV) pass on to them, the same language and culture that we imbibed from our parents and grandparents. Along with language, each generation passes on knowledge of music, songs, folklore, traditions, religious practices and cuisine generation to generation and are kept alive for posterity. Cultural genocide at our doorstep We take this historical passing on of the cultural baton as a matter of routine. No one really gives it much thought. But imagine if our children were taken away from us at a young age of 8 or 9 and injected into a completely different environment where they get insulated from their parents, elders and their original way of life. If they were removed from the tapestry of their original culture and weaved into an al...