Improve ‘Incredible India’: Young bureaucrats

In a recent interaction with newly-recruited bureaucrats, during which officers gave presentations on how to improve governance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is said to have been told that the culture ministry’s flagship “Incredible India” website needed a facelift as it lacks adequate tourist-friendly information and contains a lot of “irrelevant information”.

In another presentation, one of the young bureaucrats suggested a 24-hour emergency helpline, which could have doctors readily available on it to provide immediate advise to those who need urgent medical attention.

The suggestion, sources said, was appreciated by the Prime Minister, and it may come up for a detailed review to see if it can be implemented.

When the inadequacies of the “Incredible India” website was pointed out to the Prime Minister, sources privy to details told this newspaper that he expressed his displeasure in no uncertain terms on the issue to the top officials of the department.

This particular presentation, which was among the eight made before Mr Modi during his meeting with the 2014 batch of IAS officers recently, caught the Prime Minister’s attention, as it concerned India’s positioning as a major international tourism destination.

Apparently, the presentation focussed on how, compared to some of the websites of the world’s major tourism destinations, the “Incredible India” site could do with more information on helping tourists reach destinations of their choice, the hotels available there, the tariffs and the currently coversion rates, among other things.

The presentation is learnt to have suggested that the site could be made more user-friendly and several unwanted logos, icons and pop-ups could be replaced with helpful links for foreign and domestic tourists.

Subsequently, sources said, the Prime Minister directed culture ministry officials to update the site as soon as possible.

These presentations were made by the newly-recruited IAS officers, who prior to joining their respective cadres, worked for three months as assistant secretaries in various departments of the Central government.