Faith travels first class

Why in the News

Pilgrimage in India has been reorganised into a premium travel market, with packages priced from tens of thousands of rupees to several lakh and a projected sector growth rate of 18.2% a year. Two central schemes have funded the sites the market operates on, sanctioning projects at religious and heritage sites and across thematic circuits. The Ministry of Tourism maintains no data on how many pilgrims actually travel, and none on how much of the market is luxury. The commercial volume has reached the point where Char Dham helicopter operations alone exceed Rs 1,000 crore a season, with a fifth fatal crash in six weeks on that route. Public money is therefore building capacity at sites whose ecological and safety limits are measured against no pilgrim number at all.

How large is the pilgrimage market, and what does the state know about it?

1. A projected growth rate: A 2025 report by the consulting firm KPMG projects India’s spiritual tourism sector growing at a compound annual growth rate of 18.2%.
2. The Ministry of Tourism does not count pilgrims: It maintains no specific data on the number of pilgrim visits across the country.
3. Nor the premium segment: No data exists on what share of the spiritual travel market falls in the luxury or affordable luxury categories, the latter meaning packages bridging the mass and luxury markets.
4. What the government states in place of a figure: Press Information Bureau handouts say spiritual tourism continues to attract millions of domestic and international visitors every year, with no number attached.

What has public money built, and on what stated terms?

1. PRASHAD: The Union Ministry of Tourism’s Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASHAD) gives financial assistance to State governments and Union Territory administrations for tourism infrastructure at identified religious and heritage sites. It has sanctioned 54 projects worth Rs 1,726.74 crore, focused on infrastructure and visitor amenities.
2. Swadesh Darshan: The scheme develops integrated tourism infrastructure across 15 thematic circuits, including the Buddhist, Sufi, Himalayan, Krishna and Ramayana circuits. It has sanctioned 76 projects worth Rs 5,290.33 crore as of March 2026.
3. The stated justification: A government explainer titled ‘A Decade of Tourism-Led Growth’, published in June 2026, holds that journeys of faith sustain local livelihoods, support traditional crafts and enterprises, and drive regional economic growth.
4. Connectivity is the effect travellers report: Pilgrims attribute the new ease of reaching religious places to central efforts to connect religious corridors and improve connectivity.

What is driving demand into the non budget segment?

1. Three named drivers: Central infrastructure development around religious sites, rising religiosity, and women’s increasing mobility and independent spending power have together raised demand for group tours in non budget categories.
2. Two events reset the base: The Kumbh Mela and the inauguration of the Ram Mandir pushed up demand for spiritual tourism.
3. The traveller profile has changed: Youth now opt for pilgrimages, and group packages are surging in popularity with women travelling in them with or without their husbands.
4. A reopened route created a new destination: China reopened the Kailash Mansarovar route after six years. The first batch of pilgrims travelled in 2025, and the site has since become the destination travellers flock to.
5. Visibility is part of the pull: The drivers include an urge to reconnect with roots and the social media pressure to be seen, alongside narratives crafted by spiritual leaders and katha vachaks, meaning religious storytellers, that draw the youth.

What does the premium segment cost, and who supplies it?

1. The general price range: A religious tour to another State costs a household around Rs 50,000, and Uttarakhand packages run from Rs 40,000 to between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh a day.
2. The Kailash Mansarovar trip: It cost Rs 2.72 lakh a person for one recent couple, and can reach Rs 7 lakh depending on the operator and the route.
3. Branded packages are the growth end: One travel company sells an “Ayodhya to Kashi Quick Bhakti Yatra with Taj stays” at over Rs 1 lakh, another sells “exclusive glamping packages” for the Kumbh Mela, and several operators market “spiritual luxury” or “VIP darshan” at Tirupati.
4. The supply base in one State: Uttarakhand’s religious tourism rests on five luxury hotels, over 500 travel agents and private helicopter service providers, offering facilities from basic to five star.
5. Who is paying at the top end: Seniors are opting for luxury itineraries paid for by children living abroad, and wealthier travellers choose helicopter packages for quick darshans, sometimes clubbed with birthdays or anniversaries.
6. Hotels report it as their demand driver: The Hotel Association of India attributes strong 2025 hospitality demand to spiritual hotspots including Ayodhya, Jammu, Varanasi, Puri, Amritsar and Tirupati, with the Maha Kumbh lifting Tier II and Tier III markets and steady growth in international arrivals along spiritual circuits.

Why has the Char Dham helicopter business become a safety problem?

1. The pilgrimage has changed mode: The Char Dham Yatra covers Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, traditionally completed on foot in a clockwise direction beginning from Yamunotri, and is now done by road or helicopter.
2. The business is large: Char Dham helicopter operations, split between roughly nine shuttle companies and about 25 charter firms, generate a seasonal business exceeding Rs 1,000 crore.
3. Competition is translating into cut corners: Industry insiders warn that intense competition pushes safety into the background, with corners cut and checks skipped.
4. The named consequences of the sortie incentive: Pilots are often incentivised to increase daily sorties, which produces fatigue, rushed decisions, risky flights in unpredictable mountain weather, and minimal oversight of passenger limits or pricing.
5. The cost has already been paid: A family of three travelling from Yavatmal in Maharashtra to Kedarnath for a birthday was killed in the fifth helicopter crash in Uttarakhand within six weeks.

What pressure is the volume putting on the sites themselves?

1. Slopes are being cut for the capacity: Local transport operators report that hills are being cut as tourist numbers rise, and that the mountains were not built for business at this scale.
2. A flood hit a pilgrimage route: A flood on the Nepal-China border devastated the area around Gyirong Port and swept away the check post on the Kailash Mansarovar route.
3. Concentration at Amarnath: Around 1.13 lakh people reportedly visited Pahalgam in the first five days of the 2026 season, from where the Amarnath Cave lies 72 km from the district headquarters.
4. A town rebuilt around one temple: Shirdi, once a town of just over 25,000 residents, now records daily footfall of about 40,000, rising to 1 lakh during celebrations, served by over 150 luxury hotels.
5. The revenue that footfall generates: The Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust recorded total annual income of Rs 850.62 crore in 2024-25 and held Rs 3,918 crore in bank fixed deposits as of 31 March 2025. Donations received there include the currencies of 26 countries.
6. The conservation position: An environment organisation working at Pahalgam holds that the fragile Himalayas must be protected from any further haphazard development.

Is the public spending priority defensible?

1. The allocation: The Maharashtra government has planned expenditure of Rs 34,000 crore on infrastructure and hospitality for the 2027 Simhastha Kumbh Mela at Nashik.
2. The opportunity cost stated from the bench: A Supreme Court judge observed at a public event that 0.1% of the Kumbh allocation spent on Marathi medium schools could have saved more than 100 schools from closure, against a shrinking education budget.
3. The State’s answer: The Maharashtra Chief Minister holds that 93% of the allocation is going into permanent infrastructure that will serve Nashik for the next 50 years.
4. A non economic objective rides along: The State government also intends to use the event to assert that Lord Hanuman was born at Anjaneri near Nashik rather than at Kishkinda in Karnataka.

Challenges to scheme led pilgrimage tourism

1. The state funds what it does not measure: Infrastructure is sanctioned site by site with no pilgrim count, so no sanction can be tested against the load it was meant to carry. Eg. The project counts under the two central schemes noted above carry no matching pilgrim number.
   The Fix: Make a site level footfall estimate and a carrying capacity assessment a condition of sanction under both schemes, published with the project.
2. No carrying capacity ceiling on Himalayan shrines: Construction and flight permissions are granted by separate sector regulators, with no single authority setting a daily limit for a fragile site. Eg. The National Green Tribunal has repeatedly heard petitions on unregulated construction along Himalayan pilgrimage routes.
   The Fix: Set a statutory daily visitor ceiling per shrine, derived from a published carrying capacity study and revised on a fixed cycle.
3. Aviation safety is priced out by competition: Operators bidding for the same short seasonal window compete on price and turnaround, which is paid for out of maintenance and pilot duty time. Eg. The Uttarakhand crash sequence noted above.
   The Fix: Fix a maximum daily sortie count and pilot duty hour limit for the season, enforced by the civil aviation regulator rather than left to the operator.
4. Event capital spending crowds out recurring social spending: Expenditure on an event is one time and visible, and the school or health budget it displaces is recurring and is not. Eg. The comparison drawn from the bench between the Kumbh allocation and Marathi medium school closures.
   The Fix: Publish an event budget alongside the department budgets it draws from, so the trade off is recorded at approval rather than argued afterwards.
5. Local livelihoods capture a shrinking share: As packages move to branded operators, air charter and luxury hotels, the spending bypasses the local vendors the schemes’ own justification names. Eg. Kailash Mansarovar and Kumbh packages are sold end to end by national travel companies rather than by operators based at the site.
   The Fix: Reserve a share of on site concessions and transport permits at scheme funded sites for locally registered operators.

Conclusion

Pilgrimage in India is now a premium consumer market resting on publicly funded infrastructure, and the state that funds it does not count the people it is funding for. Two claims therefore cannot both be tested: that the spending sustains local livelihoods, and that the volume stays within what the sites can bear. Neither the ecological ceiling nor the safety record can be argued against a number nobody collects. Until that count exists, a growth projection will keep doing the work that evidence should.

Back2Basics: Simhastha Kumbh Mela

1. What it is: The Kumbh Mela held at Nashik and Trimbakeshwar in Maharashtra, timed to Jupiter’s entry into Leo, the Simha rashi from which the name comes.
2. The cycle: It recurs roughly every twelve years at each site, so a State government gets one preparation window in a generation.
3. The four Kumbh sites: Prayagraj at the Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati confluence, Haridwar on the Ganga, Ujjain on the Shipra, and Nashik on the Godavari.
4. Its heritage status: The Kumbh Mela was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2015, GS1, 12 marks] The states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand reaching the limits of their ecological carrying capacity due to tourism. Critically evaluate.”