Aarohan: A Smart Digital Platform to Promote Eco & Cultural Tourism in Jharkhand Using AI and Community-Driven Design
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Abstract
Jharkhand possesses remarkable natural and cultural assets — from the sal forests of Betla National Park to the sacred ghats of Baidyanath Dham — yet its tourism sector remains structurally underdeveloped. The state attracted fewer than 5.5 million domestic tourists in 2022, and no unified digital infrastructure exists to connect visitors with local guides, artisans, or homestay operators [1]. Tribal communities, who constitute approximately 26% of the state population, have no digital marketplace access. Aarohan is a serverless, AI-powered web platform engineered to close that gap. Built on React with Tailwind CSS on the frontend, Node.js and Express.js on the backend, and Supabase/Neon PostgreSQL for data persistence, the system delivers four core capabilities: a multilingual AI itinerary planner and chatbot powered by the Google Gemini API; immersive 360° destination previews via Photosphere.js; an interactive map layer built on Leaflet.js; and a verified community marketplace with Razorpay payment processing and cryptographic guide verification using the Node.js crypto module. Deployments run serverlessly on Vercel with Grafana analytics for governance. Three testing layers validated the system: Postman functional testing (23 test cases, 0 failures), hey load testing (0 errors at 50-concurrent baseline), and Burp Suite penetration testing (0 confirmed vulnerabilities across 47 attack vectors). Aarohan demonstrates that community-first design combined with accessible AI infrastructure can serve as a replicable model for digital tourism development in underserved Indian states.
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References
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