He says the tourism industry in the state which reached a peak in the early 2000 is witnessing a major slowdown. The first phase of 18 km of the Rs 5,100-crore project would be completed by early 2017. It has many upscale hotels and super specialty hospitals but the quality of drinking water and waste management are awful. The only hitch was all the projects were located in Kochi, limiting the scope of development.The current phase of infrastructure development bears no such inconsistency (see Kerala's Infrastructure Push). A chain of large hotels, shopping, malls and convention centres sprouted in different parts of the state rapidly.

Source: Economic Times July 14, 2016 01:30 UTC