Journal of African Development

Over the last 20 years, the tourism industry in India has become one of the most significant industries in the country. Quite to the contrary, it has become the crossroads of foreign exchange mobilization, mass job creation, rural transformation, infrastructure investment, and reactivation of the soft power. In this paper, we look at the economic aspects of Indian tourism in excruciating detail, tracing present performance versus the transformative expectations of the Viksit Bharat 2047 vision, a government-formulated national development template, which aims at increasing the GDP by USD 30-40 trillion by the 100th anniversary of the independence of India. Based on the figures published by the Ministry of Tourism Annual Reports and Data Compendium, Economic Impact Research of the World Travel and Tourism Council, Economic Survey of India, NITI Aayog's greatest evaluations, and the National Accounts Statistics, this paper presents an argument that tourism is not a passive by-product of the economy, but a tool of economic growth. The discussions focus on sectoral GDP contribution, the employment multiplier factors, the foreign exchange earnings, domestic tourism dynamics, niche tourism such as the medical and wellness tourism, the policy architecture, structural issues and future projections in line with the year 2047 horizon. This paper concludes that to achieve the Viksit Bharat tourism potential, it is necessary not a gradual modification but a radical change in attitude towards infrastructure investment, human capital development, digitization and governance reform