Vision:
- To start a national mission for revitalization and religious development of important spiritual destination.
- To place tourism as an important generator of economic extension and employment.
- To improve tourist attractiveness of the spiritual destination in a sustainable way.
- To extend and fill the gap between infrastructural facility.
- To increase security and safety of pilgrims and to raise the quality of tourist services.
Mission:
- To recognize and develop pilgrim tourist place on the principal of high tourist visits, competitiveness, sustainability in a unified manner by synergizing attempts to focus on requirements and interests of all tourists to supplement spiritual tourist destination and enhance job creation.
Objectives:
- United improvement of pilgrims destination in an organized, prioritized and a sustainable manner, to give total divine tourist experience.
- Gear pilgrims tourism for its immediate and multiplier impact on job creation and economic expansion.
- Develop the community-based expansion and pro-poor tourism concept in the expansion of the spiritual destination.
- To leverage public capital and expertise.
- To form world-class infrastructure in a spiritual destination.
- To generate awareness in the local community about the significance of tourism in terms of income, quality of life, living standard and overall expansion of a place.
- To promote regional art, talent, culture, handicrafts, creation, cuisine and much more.
Strategy of Prasad (Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive) scheme
- To classify spiritual destination which has a potential to be a world-class tourist destination?
- To assure that the expansion of these destinations which has sustainability and supporting capacities of the destinations?
- To create a structure for analysing infrastructure gaps in the identified places.
- To design in a combined manner the expansion of this destination in a special timeframe ensuring full concurrence of state and central government schemes as well as private sector investments.
- To classify and prioritized outlines which need to be taken up by dedicated public funding directly and to get additional sources of a voluntary fund from a public and private sector.
- To ensure a wide area development method for securing all the facilities required by the tourist in the recognized destinations.
- To agree and organize the expansion process for classified projects centrally.
Highlights of Prasad Scheme
- PRASAD scheme was announced during the union budget 2017-2018.
- The government will set special tourism zones with five states and this special zone will work as special purpose vehicles.
- It will boost an image of India in a foreign country and for this, an incredible 2.0 campaign launched.
- A total budget for this is Rs 100 allocated by the government and Rs 412 crore is specially funded to promote and make publicity of various schemes and programmes.
- Along with ministry of tourism, a ministry of railways also started to promote Prasad scheme by launching especially dedicated train.
- PRASAD scheme will focus on improvement and beautification of the classified pilgrimage destinations.
- A drive is on the advancement of that particular path or circuit which consists of many theological places in a state.
- Under this scheme, The ministry of tourism initially aims to cover 25 cities which are Ajmer From Rajasthan, Amritsar from Punjab, Amravati from Andhra Pradesh, Dwarka from Gujarat, Gaya from Bihar, Kamakhaya from Assam, Kancheepuram from Tamil Nadu, Kedarnath from Uttarakhand, Mathura from Uttar Pradesh, Patna from Bihar , Puri from Odisha, Varanasi from Uttar Pradesh, Vellankani from Tamil Nadu, Ayodhya from Uttar Pradesh, Badrinath from Uttarakhand, Belur from West Bengal, Deoghar from Jharkhand, Guruvayur from Kerala, Hazratbal and Katra from Jammu & Kashmir , Omkareshwar from Madhya Pradesh, Somnath from Gujarat, Srisailam and Tirupati from Andhra Pradesh and Trimbakeshwar from Maharashtra.
- To recognize new places under the PRASAD scheme is an endless process subject to sources available and programme outlines.
Circuit themes for the development and selection of spiritual destination.
Dr Mahesh Sharma, Minister of Tourism & Culture stated that committee has classified 13 themes on which a spiritual place is identified, selected and developed and in addition, a ministry has also planned to add 8 Waterway Cruise Circuits which will include rivers out of this 5 is based on the Ganga and remaining is on the Brahmaputra.The list of a circuit is listed below.
- The Himalayan Circuit
- The Coastal Circuit
- The North-East India Circuit
- The Buddhist Circuit
- The Desert Circuit
- The Krishna Circuit
- The Tribal Circuit
- The Ramayana Circuit
- The Spiritual Circuit
- The Eco Circuit
- The Heritage Circuit
- The Wildlife Circuit
- The Rural Circuit
