BHUBANESWAR: Finding foreigners busy shooting monuments, lakes and beaches of the State, one may think they are doing so out of their love or curiosity, but back home it is a booming business for them. A search for Orissa's video image in the Internet would lead to hundreds of video clippings that are available on payment. May it be instrumental folk music or intricate design on world famous Konark Temple or interiors of Lingaraj temple or Chandrabhaga beaches, these can be downloaded in lieu of a price starting Rs100.

Although several video clippings relating to Orissa affairs could be downloaded free of cost, visual documentation of places of tourist interests have been used purely for commercial purposes.

A Bhubaneswar-based tourist guide revealed how the trade had taken roots in the state. "I hardly find any foreign tourist without a sophisticated camera. They keep on shooting wherever they go. Once their memory card get filled with clippings, they usually rush to internet cafés to transmit those to their foreign destinations," he said adding that of late they were coming with memory devices to store videos.

A coordinator sitting thousands of miles away from the State's coast sorts out the clippings according to their commercial value and later puts them on various websites for sale, the tourist guide said.

Thriving business

The State Tourism Department is also aware about this thriving business on the web. "We know that video clippings of our temples are being used for commercial purposes. But we don't have the expertise or manpower to track this business," Tourism Director Santosh Kumar Sarangi told The Hindu .

He said even the State Government could earn royalty out of the business of by keeping track of downloads of these clippings.

"We are soon going to develop a portal which would address all these issues. The portal will contain visual documentation of some of our best locations to attract tourists and market the videos," Mr. Sarangi said.

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