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Welcome to india

India needs to take the idea of tourist police seriously.
India has an inherent advantage as a tourist destination. Both history and geography makes it attractive to travellers. If these inherent advantages haven't been adequately leveraged to generate more economic activity, part of the blame belongs to its poor governance record, particularly in the area of policing and security for tourists. In this context, a government run institute on tourism has recommended the creation of a specialised police force for protection of tourists to enhance India's appeal. This is a sensible suggestion and must be taken up by the government. The government claims that as many as 13 states in India have deployed tourist police in one form or another.
However, this hasn't translated into visible improvement in security for tourists. High recorded incidence of crime against tourists in Delhi, an important transit hub for tourists, is a case in point. Other than India's generally deficient tourist infrastructure and archaic laws, this too is an obstacle to ramping up tourism. Failure here will hurt employment creation when jobs created by tourism were expected to almost double to 13 million in the decade between 2013 and 2022.
Tourism needs policy attention precisely for this reason. Opportunities that are lost become apparent when the 8.89 million visitors received by continent-sized India in 2016 are juxtaposed with the 16.4 million received by city-sized Singapore. It is time to take a leaf out of Singapore's playbook and provide India's tourist police with specialised training geared towards producing better experiences for tourists. This should be complemented with Ireland's approach where the state makes itself a party to criminal proceedings in case of crime against tourists. This will insulate tourists from India's creakingly slow judicial system and encourage them to come in larger numbers.