Rural tourism the path of empowering rural Development special reference to Santal tribal villages near Santiniketan ,West Bengal.
Dr. Dewali Chatterjee
Associated with SCMS, Pune
Abstract
Rural tourism is an integral part of rural culture. Rural tourism creates its strong foundation based on the characteristics of the region where the tourism activities take place. The development of rural tourism can contribute to both socio-economic development and environmental benefits for the people within rural areas. It has significant contribution in society, fostering business growth, income generating potential and ensuring a better livelihood for rural inhabitants. One of the most important strategies to solve the problems and challenges of rural areas is rural tourism development. In recent decades, rural tourism has been considered as an approach for the economic development of sensitive places, especially in remote areas where unbound natural beauty has been observed.
In today’s world significance of rural tourism gaining propriety in order to improve the quality of tourist comfort, protect, manage, secure & promote the great natural and cultural heritage in rural areas. It is tried to use the tourism development strategy to solve rural challenges such as poverty, migration, improving income, diversifying jobs, reducing pressure on nature, improving the quality of life, improving the level of technology, improving environmental and physical conditions ,population stability, improving public services, and socioeconomic stability. The present study attempts to analyse the socio-economic condition of rural people and tribes also and future prospect of rural tourism in Birbhum District, West Bengal, India. This is an effort towards promoting Rural tourism and to preserve the culture and heritage of rural West Bengal. Santiniketan is a unique place of tourist attraction as it was the home of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore for a major part of his life. It is situated in a predominantly tribal belt in one of the backward districts of West Bengal. Tribals are a primitive and underdeveloped community of the society. This .paper discusses the rural livelihood & tribal villages and their cultural heritage. This paper also highlights the future prospect of rural sustainable tourism based on santals villages Ballavpur Danga. Socio- economic infrastructural developments of tribal (santal) people have been analysed in this work.
Keywords: socio economic development, rural livelihood, tribal villages, rural tourism, Santal tribe
