Poverty Alleviation through Rural Tourism Development in Kashmir

Rural tourism is a recent outcome and subsidiary branch of tourism sector. It has been considered as a practical theme for sustainable development throughout the world. It is a type of nature based tourism that shows the rural life, culture, art and heritage at rural locations, thereby benefitting the rural inhabitants socially and economically. Such form of tourism has created enormous impact on the rural economy and socio-cultural development of the concerned area on one hand and brings a prospective scope for the rural population on the other hand. Rural tourism has become increasingly popular in the developing countries in recent time and is widely considered as an important tool for rural development especially in developing countries. The development and growth of rural tourism is definitely useful for a country like India, where about 75 percent of its population resides in 7 million villages. The state of Jammu and Kashmir consists of almost 70 percent rural population and its economy is based on agriculture, horticulture, tourism, handicraft, handloom, forests, sericulture, and hydro power projects. Kashmir Valley which is one among the three meso regions of Jammu and Kashmir state, has vast scope for the development of rural tourism because of its several famous tourism attractions such as beautiful hill stations, scenery, horticultural products, evergreen forests, wildlife, historical and the architectural monuments, culture, art, crafts, fairs, festivals etc. In spite of being the heartland of diversity of culture, tradition and natural resources, rural tourism is still in its budding stage. The present study aims to examine and analyse the important rural areas of Kashmir which have enough tourist potentiality and also attempts to explore various prospects of the growth and development of rural tourism in Kashmir that could play a significant role in sustainable development of rural societies. The results of this work would be fruitful for the stakeholders of tourism industry as well as the policy makers in planning effectively the road map for rural tourism promotion in Kashmir. The present study is based on mostly secondary sources of data which has been collected from various organisations in order to gain fruitful results.