SOROOR AHMED pleads for greater protection to foreign tourists whose number in India is on the increase.
Of late India is being projected as a favourite tourist destination. After 9/11 when travelling to West became more difficult because of the security reasons, people of many countries started looking towards this country. While announcing the 2003 budget the then finance minister, Jaswant Singh, introduced a new concept of health-tourism.
It was planned to encourage more and more corporate hospitals, especially in big cities and tourist sites, with the double purpose of attracting patients as well as tourists from abroad. As India has no dearth of specialist doctors, the idea successfully clicked. Many patients-cum-tourists from the Middle East were wooed to India as travelling to the West, especially for Muslims, became difficult. Indian hospitals offered much cheaper facilities than those in the West. Our doctors in Bangalore successfully conducted heart surgery of a Pakistani girl-child. Even many NRIs, peoples of Indian Origin (PIOs) and western tourists who had small health problems like extricating a tooth, Root Canal Treatment (RCT) and other minor medical problems started looking towards India as medical treatment here is much cheaper than in their own respective countries. They would get treated here and at the same time visit tourist spots in the country, and if they have relatives, would visit them.
But this practice of attracting patients did not remain confined to small medical problems only. Gradually new types of patients from abroad started to arrive. Some got their kidneys transplanted as kidneys are easily available here than in any other countries. With good doctors, cheap medical treatment and no dearth of kidney-donors the National Capital Region of India fast emerged as one of the biggest kidney transplantation centres of the world. All this was exposed only recently and the king-pin, Dr Amit Kumar was arrested in Nepal. There may be some more.
This is not the only ugly side of the health-tourism. No doubt, India is no more projected by the western writers as the land of snake-charmers. Over the decades things have changed. A large number of tourists started thronging Jaipur, Udaipur, Pushkar (in Rajasthan), Goa, Agra, and Himachal Pradesh, especially after the rise of militancy in Kashmir. Even new tourist spots were developed. Now the tourists are not only from the West, but also from Israel, East Asia and Middle East countries.
With tourism came the concept of massage-girls and drugs. These girls came not only from within the country, but from poor central Asian and East European countries also.
As these things were bringing in more and more dollars we kept our eyes shut. But of late we woke up to realize that something seriously wrong is happening in this sector. In the last couple of years no fewer than one hundred foreign tourists or NRIs were either molested or had their modesty outraged and subsequently killed. On the New Year ’s Day in Mumbai we saw two young American girls of Indian origin being publicly molested by a mob of 70-80 upwardly mobile new year’s revellers. Another young Swedish girl was molested in Kochi on the same mid-night. Even last year one such girl had her dress peeled off on New Year’s Day.
Rajasthan saw a series of such high-profile incidents. In one such case an auto-rickshaw driver even killed a German woman. But all these crimes were not committed by ruffian elements alone. In most cases the perpetrators were the owners of hotels, tourist operators or their employees or close relatives of top bureaucrats – the son of Orissa DGP in one case. While the Rajasthani auto-driver was summarily tried and jailed, the fates of many other cases are still hanging in balance. It is very difficult for the long hands of justice to reach the necks of well-placed people.
In January 2008 alone about one dozen foreign women were either molested or had their modesty outraged all over India. As if that was not enough in February came the incident involving 15-years old, Scarlet Keeling, from England. She was killed on the beach of Goa, but, notwithstanding the autopsy report confirming it, the police says that she died of drowning.
What sounds intriguing is the role of the Goa police. Scarlet’s family members charged that they are shielding the perpetrators of the crime. Her mother, Fiona MacKeown, now wants a second autopsy.
These shameful incidents had taken place in Mumbai, Goa, Agra, Kochi, Rajasthan etc. Ironically, most of these places are considered safer than the rest of India.
It is not that incidents like these do not happen to Indians. What is suddenly causing concern to us is that they are happening to tourists, who are our guests and whose maltreatment is against our age old traditions of hospitality. Besides, they may drive away tourists and harm the prospects of developing tourism as a large foreign exchange earning industry.