Despite the increasing number of rape cases being reported in India and the corresponding bad press the country has been receiving around the world, India’s attractiveness as a tourist destination for women has barely wavered. In fact, the number of women tourists arriving in India as a proportion of total tourists has been increasing overall.
According to the latest data compiled by the Ministry of Tourism, women have been making up an increasing proportion of foreign tourist arrivals in India — the proportion of female tourists arriving in India has increased from 34.7 per cent in 1996 to 41.2 per cent in 2013. However, the data also shows that there was barely a change from 2012 — when the globally infamous Nirbhaya rape case took place — to 2013.
In absolute terms, this increasing proportion of women tourists, coupled with a huge increase in the number of tourists arriving in India overall, means the number of female foreign tourists visiting India increased from around 7.9 lakh in 1996 to 28.7 lakh in 2013.
To be sure, the data on which parts of India female tourists are going to has not been provided — it could very well be that they are shunning Delhi and flocking to relatively safer cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru. The data does show that the growth in Delhi’s share of foreign tourist arrivals (both male and female) from 2012 to 2013 has slowed compared to the previous year.
The 2013 data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau shows that, on average, around 92 women were raped in the country each day. So far, the numbers show that India is still an attractive destination for women despite this statistic, but that image could be seeing the beginning of its end.
