International travel is a necessity in the interconnected world that we live in. It connects people, ferries students to their universities, re-unites families, fosters economic activities, spruce up trade, and promotes tourism.
As the world faces the COVID-19 pandemic, naturally, countries restricted the movement of people and closed their borders.
In the case of India, a devastating second wave brought the country under a stricter travel regime by many countries in the western hemisphere. However, the grim situation has changed for the better since then. What is yet to change is the mindset of some of these countries, which do not seem to have been updated on how India has managed to bring down the numbers significantly, so much so that infection rates are at a bare minimum in many cities and towns.
As they ease travel restrictions, presumably factoring in medical and scientific opinion, different rules for different nationalities seem to have become a norm.
Some relaxations for people of certain nationalities defy medical logic and border on racial profiling of international travellers.
Take the example of Canada — a country where some 1.4 million people identify themselves as having Indian lineage. Almost one-third of Canada's international students come from India, and Indians constitute 20 percent of Canada’s new permanent residents.
While there remains a total ban on Indian travellers, Canada will open the door for fully-vaccinated US tourists from August 8!
But it still remains unmoved by the fact that more than 33,000 Indian students are waiting to reach Canada in time for new semesters kicking off at various universities in September. Without direct flights to Canada, students will be forced to travel via many countries and they require a negative COVID-19 test result from the last port of departure for their destination cities in Canada.
Travel restrictions are formulated based on the risks arising out of a particular situation or incident. It is usually expected that when the situation improves, relaxations will be in order for genuine travellers based on a universal set of rules.
But singling out travellers from India when the country is witnessing steady dwindling of cases cannot be a decision born out of any objective criteria, but a highly objectionable selection process that unabashedly favours travellers from the ‘developed West’.
India had crossed 4 million cases after the US and Brazil in September. In May, the second wave was worse by all means for India. But, the daily cases have dropped over 90 percent from the 400,000 then to about 39,000 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. A much smaller country in terms of population, the United Kingdom had about 25,000 cases during the same time.
Even in the US, the most powerful country in the world, there is no indication that the dreaded virus is under total control. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Rochelle Walensky said on July 22 the seven-day average of new cases in the US was up 53 percent over the previous week.
So, a position that US citizens are better placed to travel than people from India has no basis in science. It is based on other considerations such as the bilateral ties, average spending capacity of US travellers, and — let’s be honest — a bias based on racial profiling.
When it comes to the UK, India is in the red list, which basically bans Indians from travelling to Britain. But fully-vaccinated Indians can travel to France, a very important European country.
Of course, much more needs to be done if India wants to achieve its stated target of vaccinating its entire adult population of 940 million by the end of 2021. Government data shows it has vaccinated 93 million people, which is much more than what Germany and Brazil could do in terms of vaccination.
This ringing double-standard was in full display when Covishield, manufactured by Serum Institute of India, was excluded from among the vaccines which had been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for its ‘vaccine passport’ programme that allows free movement of people within Europe. Covishield is the brand name used for the AstraZeneca vaccine in India and Covishield should have been an automatic choice when EMA had approved AstraZeneca. But certain prejudices refuse to go away even after witnessing a pandemic that did not spare the richest and the most powerful countries in the world.
Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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