As I settled onto the sunken seat of a 15-year-old taxi cab, my eye caught a colourful dangler hanging from its rear view mirror : It was entitled "Atithi Devo Bhavah".

It’s a high-power (read BIG spends) multimedia campaign, credited to a young and enthusiastic Minister of Tourism, in an effort to improve the "tourist-orientation" of all Indians.  Translated from Sanskrit to English, it means : A guest is like a God, and should be treated as such. 

Here’s an excerpt from the official website of the Government of India :

A pioneer initiative by Ministry of Tourism, Government of India that will help tap into the full potential of tourism in India. Ministry of Tourism, Government of India has introduced “Atithi Devo Bhavah Program” – A nation wide campaign that aims at sensitising key stakeholders towards tourists, through a process of training and orientation. The endeavour is to boost tourism in India, which in turn would act as a catalyst for India’s economic growth. To launch a national level initiative that works at many levels to address all the above issues.

Atithi Devo Bhava aims at creating awareness about the effects of tourism and sensitizing people about preservation of our rich heritage & culture, cleanliness and warm hospitality. It also re-instills a sense of responsibility towards tourists and re-enforces the confidence of foreign tourist towards India as a preferred holiday destination.

Let’s cut back to the 15-year-old cab, for a minute.  If you’re not familiar with the scene in Bombay, let me describe it for you a bit… 

An overwhelming majority of the taxis are well over 10 years old.  Many of them are driven by people who "rent" them for the day from owners (of multiple taxis), and pay a princely sum for a day’s running.   After deducting petrol expenses (and any bribes they might have to offer to traffic policemen during the day), they are not left with much to take home.  Meanwhile, the owner usually spends his time in some other business, and is only bothered about the fact that his vehicles earn him his daily rent and don’t get involved in any accidents.

There are some owners who only have one vehicle, and drive it themselves.  Many of these are still paying off a 20-year loan on the vehicle, and can barely meet their daily needs, living as they do in some of the costliest real estate in the world!  This is partly because, every few months, their families back home (in villages) face some emergency or the other, forcing them to approach a loan shark (who charges them interest on a per-day basis), and they’re back to square one on the loan repayments!

As a result, almost any cab you hail in this "Shanghai of India" will be a 12-15 year old Fiat model with sunken bug-ridden seats, tattered cushion covers, worn out flooring (with no rubber mats), no AC, inadequate ventilation and an overheated groaning, noisy engines.  Suffice it to say that sprucing up the interiors (or mechanics) of the car is not very high on priority for any cab owner.

Today, as I settled down in the plush environs of my 15-year-old taxi, and noticed the colourful dangler, I was tempted to strike up a conversation with the driver.  Did he know what it meant.  Yes, he did!  (One side of the message was printed in English while the other side was printed in Hindi).  I brought his attention to the concluding para :

I am my country’s goodwill ambassador and will adhere to the highest code of conduct. I will not allow anything or anyone to tarnish the image of my country in any manner.

I asked him if he agreed with the message printed on the dangler.  He did!  Why then, hadn’t he taken the trouble to dust the seats off, put a new seat cover, clean it up a little?  Simple.  Because he couldn’t afford to!

Sometimes, it’s difficult to argue with the Truth, isn’t it?