I recently saw a questionaire in NDTV : Can India reach the top position in attracting foreign tourists?
Presently about 2.5 M foreign tourists are coming. 6 M is the target in 2011.
I am sure that India - particularly Tamilnadu is not properly presented all in the world tourist scenerio. Day before Yesterday - Friday - I spent 4 hrs in Mysore, just to locate Arch. Deptt. I could not meet the Director. A Dy. Director tried to help me, but his assistants were in Holiday mood. I wanted to buy books from them. They advised me to buy the books in Chennai. Can you imagine?
A responsible person in The Mysore University History Deptt is not aware of Nilakanta Sastry. I opened my conversation : I am thrilled to be here, because from this place Chola History was let known to several places and found our Dy. Director, who modestly acknowledged Sastry's contributions. I wanted to know where he sat & did his research works (which office he occupied). They could not direct me properly. Any statue? any photo? No... nothing..
properly in the world map. We shall begin to try.
Anyhow, adamently I persisted and located a photograph of Neelakanta Sastry in the Library located in the Maharaja's Palace. He wears a turben like Dr. S.Radhakrishnan. He had served there during 1952 - 54. Unfortunate : He is yet to go into History.
I've heard that lot of tamil palm leaf manuscripts are still lying in some corner of the mysore archaeological dept. Not sure when they will see the daylight.
I'd like to add that in channels like discovery and national geographic, I hardly see any programs that project our history (tamilnadu in particular) or places of tourist importance in proper light. Once in a bluemoon they will show tanjore and hampi - that's all.
There is no proper map of tamilnadu or chennai available to a traveller who lands at the chennai international airport. Reforms must begin from that point onwards.