(Prerna Prabhakar is an Associate Fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research. This column first appeared in the print edition of The Indian Express on July 31, 2021.)
- Travel has been badly hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent restrictions on cross-border movement across the world. There has been a decline of 42-47 per cent in the world’s total passengers in 2021 compared to 2019. For India, while the number of passengers travelling by air picked up after the first wave, it fell drastically when the second wave hit. For June 2021, the average daily departures were at 1,100, higher than 700 in June 2020, but still significantly lower than 2,000 in April 2021. Travel becomes an important medium for trade in services, especially where consumers or firms make use of a service in another country. It is, therefore, necessary to revive travel and to provide conducive and safe conditions for it…
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