C B Ramkumar, Amitabh Kant Green Dreams Book Launch Outlook RT Summit 2018
Green Dreams book launch takes place in the esteemed presence of the author CB Ramkumar, Mr Indranil Roy, CEO of Outlook Group and Mr Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog.
#BookLaunch #Outlookindia #Awards #RTSummit2018
#BookLaunch #Outlookindia #Awards #RTSummit2018
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00:00 Well, it's time to do the honors and to launch Green Dreams,
00:03 I'd like to invite the author, Mr. C.B. Ram Kumar,
00:07 Mr. Indranil Roy, CEO, Outlook Group,
00:10 and Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO, Neeti Aayog,
00:13 and of course, the force behind Incredible India
00:15 and Make in India campaign, among others.
00:18 Gentlemen, may I please invite you on stage
00:20 to do the honors, please.
00:21 (upbeat music)
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01:14 Ladies and gentlemen, Green Dreams.
01:17 (upbeat music)
01:20 It's a lifetime of learning in that book.
01:24 Well, all the best to Mr. Ram Kumar,
01:26 thank you, Mr. Roy and Mr. Kant,
01:28 may I please request you to stay back.
01:30 You've had a long experience with tourism
01:33 and we'd love to hear your views and your,
01:36 you know, what you feel about the future
01:38 of sustainable and responsible tourism.
01:40 Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Amitabh Kant.
01:43 (audience applauding)
01:46 - Indra Neel, Ram Kumar, distinguished guests,
01:53 ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to be here
01:56 to release Mr. Ram Kumar's book, The Green Dreams,
02:00 which is based on his own personal experiences
02:04 of building our native village
02:08 and learning from its own experiences.
02:10 So this is a unique contribution that he's leaving behind
02:15 and for all of us to benefit from it,
02:19 so let me first compliment Ram Kumar
02:21 for putting it all down for future generations.
02:25 And let me also compliment Outlook Traveler Group
02:31 and Outlook Traveler and Indra Neel in particular
02:34 for this great initiative of responsible tourism.
02:39 You know, I think Outlook is the only group
02:44 which has put such immense focus, such energy,
02:47 such vibrancy and such dynamism
02:51 behind driving responsible tourism
02:54 because to my mind, that is really the future.
02:56 We must understand that the world of tourism
03:03 is all about giving back to the nature.
03:08 You know, when I took over Kerala tourism many years back,
03:13 we used to have charter full of flights
03:17 coming into Kovlam.
03:19 They used to come in from UK and they used to,
03:22 huge number of charters used to come
03:24 and this was all mass tourism
03:26 and actually mass tourism had led to,
03:31 you know, illegal encroachments,
03:33 it had led to the one unique product of Kerala,
03:37 the Kovlam beach being totally devastated.
03:41 So tourists were coming in,
03:43 spending about $25 a night for a product
03:46 which was the most beautiful beach,
03:48 a lovely sunshine where you would give anything
03:53 but it was just mass tourism at its best
03:57 and every year, charter operators used to pay in advance
04:00 so that more illegal construction could be done
04:03 and actually to my mind, most people do not realize this
04:07 but tourism has actually destroyed several cultures,
04:11 it has destroyed several destinations
04:13 and therefore, you know, in 2011,
04:18 the World Tourism Organization
04:20 got one of the most leading experts in tourism,
04:24 a German called Stresnake to do a survey
04:28 and he'd done this survey in 1990s,
04:31 he looked at the top 1% of the traveler,
04:33 the most rich, affluent,
04:36 the most expensive travelers of the world
04:39 and he looked at about 10,000 of these topmost travelers
04:42 and he asked them,
04:43 "What do you want to do when you want to travel?"
04:45 and in 1990, they had all said,
04:49 about 95% of them had said that they want to go
04:52 and experience sun, sand and sea,
04:54 what was then known as Triple S,
04:58 sun, sand and sea
04:59 and then, you know, in 2011,
05:02 he did a survey of the same 1%,
05:04 1% upper end of the market,
05:06 the rich and affluent travelers,
05:08 the rich and famous segment
05:10 and he asked them exactly the same question,
05:13 "What do you want to do when you want to travel?"
05:16 and you know, by that time,
05:19 almost 84% of them said
05:22 that they want to travel to a destination
05:26 where, which is extremely experiential,
05:28 where they can learn about a culture,
05:31 where they can see the society as it exists
05:34 and where they can give back something to the destination
05:38 and the world had totally moved from sun, sand and sea
05:41 to responsible and experiential tourism.
05:44 You know, the people by that time,
05:46 in that about 12, 13 years,
05:50 the top end travelers all wanted to go
05:53 and see a destination as it existed
05:55 and want to contribute something to that local culture.
05:59 People had, by that time,
06:00 moved away from the five star world,
06:02 they had moved away from anything which was not authentic
06:06 and therefore, you know, one of the key things
06:08 which I did as Secretary Tourism
06:10 was to go back to the roots of Kerala.
06:13 So, because Kovilam had been devastated,
06:15 we stopped mass tourism and we stopped charter flights
06:19 but we went back and brought in,
06:21 Kerala as it existed
06:24 and our basic philosophy was that we'll do everything
06:27 but not ape the west.
06:28 So, we went back and rediscovered
06:30 the traditional Kerala architecture,
06:33 which were houses were being destroyed and burned
06:36 as firewood, so we brought back
06:39 the traditional Kerala architecture called the Nalkittam
06:43 and actually that became,
06:45 many of the beach resorts were actually made
06:47 with the traditional Kerala architecture.
06:49 We brought back the traditional Kerala martial art,
06:51 which is the mother of all martial arts, Kalripet.
06:56 We brought back all the traditional art forms of Kerala
06:59 from Kathakali to Othantullal
07:02 to all the top art forms of Kerala.
07:05 We brought back the traditional Kerala cuisine,
07:07 so all that you get now is stew and fish moly and et cetera,
07:11 all died out, we brought them back
07:13 but more important than anything else,
07:15 one of the key things we did was to convert poachers
07:18 into guides in Periyar Game Sanctuary.
07:21 We supported them for about first six months financially
07:24 from Kerala tourism and then we realized
07:26 that actually these poachers are much better
07:28 than any tourism guide,
07:30 they know the forest better than anyone else
07:32 but their problem was financial,
07:34 so you had to support them in advance.
07:36 We supported them for six months
07:38 and then they went back to becoming poachers
07:40 and then we supported them for five years
07:43 and actually they became some of the finest guides
07:46 and Periyar actually became a great tourism product.
07:50 It revived itself simply because of these great guides
07:53 that we had done.
07:54 So we brought back a lot of unique products.
07:58 We brought back the traditional Kerala houseboats
08:01 which were once being used as rice boats
08:04 and on which not a single nail is used.
08:09 The traditional carpenters had gone away
08:11 to the Gulf countries, we brought them back
08:13 and started them and these became
08:14 the new houseboats of Kerala.
08:17 We opened up the backwaters of Kerala
08:20 which are the most fascinating water channels
08:22 anywhere in the world which had never been used
08:24 as a tourism product.
08:26 We opened up, we brought back the traditional Ayurveda
08:30 not as a massage but as a regimen
08:33 and which brought huge life to Kerala
08:35 for a long period of time
08:37 and I think we did some unique products
08:41 like the tree huts, et cetera
08:44 and one of the key focus of this entire strategy
08:47 of new products was that whatever we do
08:51 we'll do it on carrying capacity
08:53 and we'll not allow any single construction
08:55 to be higher than the size of coconut tree.
08:58 So whether it was backwaters, whether it was houseboats,
09:00 whether it was monar, everything was based
09:03 on carrying capacity and we demonstrated
09:05 that actually high value tourism, not mass tourism
09:09 but high value tourism actually gives you higher returns.
09:13 It gives you more value
09:14 but what people of high value want is great experiences
09:19 which is extremely responsible in nature
09:21 and therefore you have to create responsible products
09:25 and on the supply side a vast number
09:28 of responsible products need to be built
09:30 which bring on the traditional and the original ethos
09:33 and the authentic ethos of a destination
09:36 and whatever you do the world is looking
09:38 to what the destination
09:41 and what experience you can create there
09:44 and therefore the world of tourism is about experiences.
09:47 It's about experiential tourism
09:50 and experiential tourism is about responsible tourism
09:53 and it's important to say this
09:55 because India will be confronted
09:57 with huge urbanization issues.
09:59 The world of urbanization, you know,
10:02 it's ended across America, it's ending across Europe,
10:06 it's nearing its completion in China
10:08 but in India it's just begun.
10:10 So if you go by the latest McKenzie study,
10:13 by 2050 you'll have 700 million Indians
10:16 getting into the process of urbanization.
10:18 I mean every minute as I speak here today
10:20 there are 30 Indians who are moving
10:22 from rural areas to urban areas.
10:24 When America urbanized, land, gas and water
10:30 were cheaply available
10:31 and because they were cheaply available,
10:33 Americans had the luxury of creating cities like Atlanta
10:37 where 99.9% of the people travel by cars.
10:42 Nobody walks, nobody cycles.
10:44 They all travel by cars so they created,
10:46 I mean you could live in New Jersey,
10:47 travel to New York, guzzle gas,
10:49 you could build big limousines.
10:52 Because gas was available,
10:55 you could guzzle cheaply available gas.
10:58 Now all these are scarce commodities
11:01 so you can't have the American model
11:03 of urbanization anymore.
11:04 You need more compact, dense,
11:07 you need to recycle every,
11:10 you need more livable urbanization,
11:12 you need to recycle every drop of water,
11:16 you need to ensure that you are able to segregate
11:20 at the household level waste
11:22 and then utilize that waste for better purposes.
11:26 I mean it has huge energy potential to be able to utilize.
11:30 And in the interim period you have many entrepreneurs
11:32 have done some remarkable work in terms of innovation
11:36 in many of these areas.
11:38 And I think huge amount of possibility and potential
11:41 exists for responsible tourism.
11:43 This is the only way forward.
11:45 And what Ram Kumar's book, The Green Dreams, reveals
11:48 is that actually being responsible destination
11:53 or creating a responsible tourism product
11:57 makes good business.
11:58 It's good economics.
12:00 It's the chances of you getting higher unit value
12:04 responsible from responsible tourism
12:06 because the world is looking for experiential tourism
12:09 is much more, much higher,
12:11 and that the world will pay you much more
12:13 and therefore economically and commercially
12:16 it's better to do sustainable business.
12:18 And what he says is that it is profitable business
12:21 to be a responsible, to create a responsible product.
12:26 And this is what Green Dreams is all about.
12:29 And therefore my compliments to Ram Kumar
12:32 for writing all his experiences
12:35 so that we can all learn.
12:36 It's a very readable book.
12:37 You can probably read it in one or two hours
12:40 and you'll greatly benefit from it.
12:42 And I've known Ram Kumar for a long while
12:45 ever since I was doing Incredible India.
12:47 I met him in Bangalore and I was very fascinated
12:49 with the story of our native village
12:51 of taking people back to native village
12:54 and creating a unique experience.
12:55 There are very few entrepreneurs like him.
12:58 Everybody wants to do what the Western world wants.
13:01 Everybody wants to replicate what the,
13:03 you know, what the Western traveler wants
13:06 but they don't realize that actually
13:07 Western travelers fed up of the same five star hotel,
13:12 the same Marriott's and the same Radisson's.
13:14 They want a different experience.
13:17 And that different experience is what Ram Kumar
13:19 is able to provide and give you that experience
13:21 through his book.
13:22 So I compliment him and I compliment the Outlook Group
13:26 for this very unique initiative of Responsible Tourism.
13:29 They have all my support.
13:31 I'm fully behind them.
13:32 I would have loved to stay back for the award
13:34 but I have to go for a MRI checkup.
13:37 So my apologies for that but I wish them all the best
13:40 and I wish all the participants here all success.
13:43 Many of you have done some very unique work
13:45 in your different areas of growth.
13:47 You've come from different parts of the world.
13:49 You've come from, some of you have come from Nepal.
13:51 Some of you have come from what I would term
13:54 as great rural and village tourism products.
13:58 And you're great entrepreneurs.
14:00 All of you are great entrepreneurs in many, many ways.
14:02 And actually India is proud of all of you
14:05 and we are extremely proud that the Responsible Tourism
14:08 movement has taken a big jump forward, a big leap forward
14:12 thanks to the Outlook Traveler Group.
14:14 And I wish it all success and I wish it all progress
14:17 and I wish it great energy, vibrancy and dynamism.
14:21 Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen.
14:22 (audience applauding)