GASTRONOMY CIRCUITS IN INDIA: REFRAMING LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT

Gastronomy tourism is often portrayed as an experience-driven category focused on restaurants, festivals, and heritage food. This framing overlooks the broader socio-ecological and institutional networks that sustain culinary systems and determine whether tourism contributes to local prosperity or value leakage. This paper introduces and develops the concept of gastronomy circuits — spatially and functionally interconnected networks of production, processing, distribution, consumption, and resource recovery that together shape destination sustainability outcomes. Using India as an empirical context, the paper integrates circular economy thinking, social–ecological systems theory, and socio-technical transition literature to: (1) present a five-layer model of gastronomy circuits; (2) propose a mixed-methods toolkit for mapping and measuring circuits (GIS, material flow analysis, social network analysis, participatory mapping); (3) identify governance and policy levers for operationalizing circularity; and (4) outline a robust research agenda. The manuscript contributes by providing a meso-level analytical construct that links food system structure to tourism outcomes and by offering concrete methodological pathways for researchers and practitioners to measure, pilot, and scale regenerative gastronomy initiatives.