Tourists will come only if we are nice to them.

"The World Economic Forum's (WEF's) travel and tourism competitiveness index, released last week, showed that India had moved up 12 places and now ranks 40th among 136 nations globally. The report also notes that this was the largest leap made by any country in the top 50," wrote an editorial in Mint. Time to break out the bubbly? Not quite. While the number of tourists visiting India has indeed increased from 2.65 million in 2000 to 8.89 million last year, it is nothing compared to 84.5 million visitors to France, 77.5 million to the US, 68.2 million to Spain, 56.9 million to China and 50.7 million to Italy. Even developing countries like Turkey had 39.4 million visitors, Mexico 32.1 million, and Russia 31.3 million. Why do we have so few visitors? On average, a tourist spends $2,610 in India, $2,639 in the US $2,005 in China but only as little as $543 in France. Yet Paris has a reputation for being very expensive, and a small bottle of water can set you back 2 Euros, equivalent to Rs 140, in a restaurant. Trouble is that India has a poor reputation, such as "cumbersome visa regulations, bad travel infrastructure, poor sanitation, collapsing law enforcement systems and concerns about women's safety". So India gets a higher proportion of business tourists, who probably spend more, and fewer leisure tourists. Lurid headlines about rape of foreign women have become regular. Recently a German woman was raped in Tamil Nadu and a British woman was raped and murdered in Goa. 15 year old Scalett Keeling was raped and murdered in Goa in 2008. Two men were charged but found innocent, have been charged again. The case of Bitti Mohanty is a particularly ugly stain on our judicial system. How a rapist was allowed to go out on parole, went on the run for 7 years and has now been given bail, instead of a longer sentence to punish him for evading justice. On top of that we have an autocrat in power who suddenly banned all Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes on a whim, catching all the tourists, who had already exchanged their currencies, in a desperate situation. Apparently, a new rule is being considered by which we will need an Aadhar card for air travel. Since foreign countries do not subject their citizens to the indignity of fingerprinting and iris scans how tourists will travel around India is a mystery. India's heritage buildings are in a sorry state, wrote Amitabh Kant. He cites the example of Humayun's tomb in Delhi which has been restored with money from the Aga Khan Trust. Most of these heritage sites are of conquerors which may account form the lack of interest. Some of the palaces have been converted into hotels as the Taj Lake Palace Hotel and the Neemrana Fort Hotel in Rajasthan. To attract foreigners we have to be proud of our nation and that will only happen when we are treated with respect, not as criminals, by those in power. But that is how they stay in power. So it will not happen.