Fair-Based Rural Tourism : A Potential Growth Engine for Rural Economy in Gujarat

The current global recession warrants emerging economies to figure out ways to decouple from the US economy. The need of the hour for emerging economies is to figure out self-sustaining growth engines, driven by domestic demand. Tourism has proved to be a growth engine for many Asian economies, but in most of the cases it is largely driven by foreign tourists. Rural tourism, targeted towards the urban population of the same country, could prove to be a growth engine driven by domestic demand. The rich tradition of the rural areas can become a source of attraction for the urban population. This paper throws some light on one aspect of rural tourism, i.e., fair and festival-based rural tourism. The attractiveness of fair and festival-based rural tourism is explained in the paper with the case study of Gujarat state. Some major rural fairs and festivals in the state of Gujarat are described and how they can play a major role in stimulating rural economy has been discussed