Homestay Tourism in India: Opportunities and Challenges

Home stay tourism is an emerging tourism concept evolved lately in the tourism world. India can be a model homestay for its multi-faceted potentialities. Natural gifts, man-made heritages ethnocultural richness, innocent social settings, pleasant hospitality and many more unexplored treasures that are dreams for experts of tourism. Homestay tourism cannot prosper sans the convergence of needs of the affluent and the needy based on the premise of demand driven mechanism because it is a need base concept. India can harness the boon of tourist potentiality rampant at the rural areas where government has pro-poor programs. This form of tourism is based on three aspects namely service, facility and attraction. India has a strong position only in attraction whereas it is lacking in facility and services. Sustainable tourism takes place if home grown resources and natural settings are effectively served to the tourism as well as also preserved. Promotion of tourism thus is highly dependent upon the active participation of the private sector and communities where the role of government becomes that of a facilitator

An evaluation of medical tourism in India

Medical tourism is a fast growing multibillion-dollar industry around the world and it entails trade in services of two major industries i.e. medicine and tourism. India is currently promoting medical tourism aggressively. The present study presents an overview of medical tourism in India and presents a SWOT analysis and concludes with some valuable suggestions to develop India as a global Medical Tourism destination. The research is descriptive in nature and the data used includes interviews and discussions with various stakeholders as well as a literature review based on secondary sources. The research reveals that the key competitive advantages of India in the medical tourism arena arises from the following: low cost advantage, strong reputation in the advanced healthcare segment (cardiovascular surgery, organ transplants, eye surgery etc.) and the diversity of the many and unique tourist destinations available in the country. The key concerns facing the industry include: absence of government initiatives, the lack of a coordinated effort to promote the industry, the lack of an accreditation mechanism for hospitals and the lack of uniform pricing policies and standards across hospitals throughout India

Indian regulatory update April–October 2018

This document provides updates in regulatory requirements regarding conduct of clinical trials in India

Biodegradation of Orange II dye by Phanerochaete chrysosporium in simulated wastewater

157-161This study presents decolorization of textile azo dye, Orange II, by white rot fungus, Phanerochaete chrysosporium. Orange II (85%) was removed in 7 days (optimum decolorization on 5th day at 28-30°C and pH 5.0) in liquid cultures under shaking aerobic conditions using P. chrysosporium. Higher dye concentration in simulated dye showed inhibitory effects on decolorization. Decolorization ability of fungus was correlated to lignolytic enzyme activity

Photocatalytic degradation of hazardous Rhodamine B dye using sol-gel mediated ultrasonic hydrothermal synthesized of ZnO nanoparticles

The present study is focused on the sol-gel ultrasonic hydrothermal synthesis of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles and its application in the degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB) dye. ZnO nanoparticles were synthesized with varying temperatures at 90 °C, 190 °C and 550 °C. Zinc nitrate hexahydrate [Zn(NO3)2·6H2O] and potassium hydroxide were used to prepare ZnO nanoparticles and investigated using the X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) for crystallinity, surface morphology, and band gap, respectively. Results obtained from XRD analysis shows that the synthesized ZnO nanoparticles are of hexagonal structure and crystalline in size ranged from the 21.1–32.41 nm. The effects of temperature show that the crystalline size of ZnO increased with increasing temperature and surface morphology investigated by FESEM. DRS used to calculate the band gap of nanoparticles shows that 3.26 eV at 90 °C, 3.25 eV at 190 °C and 3.23 eV at 550 °C. The optimal condition was determined using the response surface methodology (RSM) based Box Behnken design (BBD) method. We found that the ZnO material synthesized at 90 °C exhibits a smaller size, providing a larger surface area for photocatalytic degradation of the RhB dye. Energy is saved as it was synthesized at low temperatures. The maximum removal efficiency of Rohdamine B (RhB) dye (25 mg/L) obtained were 95% at optimized conditions i.e. pH 7, 2 g/L catalyst dose after 70 min of ultraviolet photocatalytic treatment