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MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) tourism is among the key revenue spinners of hospitality and tourism industry in the contemporary world. Apart from bringing together different facets of tourism into one comprehensive body it also allows the economy of a nation to develop progressively. According to statistics released by the World Tourism Organization (WTO), there will be 1000 crore travellers worldwide by the end of 2020 and it is assumed that travel due to business will contribute nearly 14% of all international movement. The estimated market size of MICE in India is Rs 37,576 crores and its contribution to the global MICE industry stands at 0.96%. The paper highlights the evolution of MICE tourism and investigates its future prospects in India. The present research also enumerates the efforts being made by the Central and State governments to promote key destinations as future brand ambassadors for MICE tourism in the country that could place India formidably in the map of MICE tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the Health and Child Welfare Exhibition held in colonial Calcutta in 1920. Despite a few scholarly references, however, there has been no detailed study till date. The vicereines of India launched child welfare exhibitions motivated by the transnational exhibitory baby health week propaganda initiative to curb infant mortality. These exhibitions were also locally organised and collaborative in nature with an urgent nationalist appeal. The study critically engages with select Exhibition lectures about so-called 'clean' midwifery and 'scientific' motherhood given by famous Bengali medical practitioners and other prominent professionals, predominantly men and a few women. These drew intimate sociobiological connections between the problems of 'dirty' midwifery, ritual pollution, improper confinement, insanitary childbirth, insufficient lactation and the excessive maternal and infant deaths in Calcutta. The central argument is that these public lectures primarily focused on the very making of the 'ideal' Indian nursing mother, often imagined as the traditional yet modern bhadramahila mother figure, for rejuvenating community and national health and vigour. Correspondingly, it highlights the transnational resonance of famous Frederic Truby King's 'mothercraft' popularised as childcare by the clock. The paper is, therefore, guided by the twin purposes of filling the gap in our knowledge about child welfare exhibitions in colonial India and illuminating extant scholarship on the global infant welfare movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]