Tourism falls sharply in India as rape cases keep foreigners at home.
Tourism has fallen sharply in India for the first three months of the year, according to a survey of Indian tourism industry participants. Foreign visits have dropped 25 percent and the number of female tourists has dropped 35 percent.
As the Guardian reports, these industry figures contrast with official Indian government statements which claimed tourism had increased and that the widely publicized gang rape in Delhi had had no adverse impact on foreign travel to the country.
Sexual violence in India has become a major international story of late following the brutal gang rape and eventual death of a woman in Delhi. Just last month, a Swiss tourist was gang-raped while biking through central India and a British woman jumped out of a third story hotel room to avoid an assault from the hotel manager.
Complaints about sexual assault have sky-rocketed since the Delhi case, the Guardian notes:
Delhi police figures show a dramatic rise in reported crime since 1 January, with molestation cases up by 590.4% over the same period last year and rape cases up by 147.6%. The front pages of Sunday's newspapers carried a story about the gang rape of an 18-year-old male Delhi University student who had gone out to meet a Facebook friend.
(AP Photo)
