Organic Farming Based Rural Tourism

The tribal communities in Betul and Chhindwara's forest villages had lived for decades in a cycle of rain-fed agriculture, seasonal wage labour, and migration. Income arrived for a few months each year and then disappeared, forcing most men to leave for nearby urban centres while women managed households and debt. What these villages possessed in abundance, rich Gond culture, traditional mud-brick architecture, native food knowledge, forest environments, and deep community life, had no economic channel. Tourists did not come because there was no infrastructure. Infrastructure did not exist because there was no income.

B2V and MPTB approached this not as a construction problem but as a systems problem. The intervention wove together physical infrastructure, skills development, and community organisation simultaneously. MPTB provided homestay subsidies to reduce the capital barrier for families converting traditional homes into visitor accommodation, while B2V delivered training in hotel management, hospitality, food safety, and guest interaction through the Institute of Hotel Management in Bhopal. Village Tourism Committees were constituted and trained to manage tourism collectively. Village Level Entrepreneurs were developed to handle bookings, promotion, and visitor coordination. GIS mapping documented tourist attractions across the villages, and an e-promotion system was built to reach potential visitors. Solar-powered cooking facilities were introduced to ground the tourism offer in sustainable practice from the outset.