Air India to serve only vegetarian meals to economy passengers

On Monday, Air India, India’s national airline, announced that it would no longer serve meat to its economy passengers on its domestic flights. The move was officially made in order to reduce wastage and cost and improve catering services.

“We have decided to serve vegetarian meals in our economy class seats on domestic flights,” Air India Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani told The Hindu. However, non-vegetarian meals would continue to be served in business and executive class on domestic as well as international flights.

It was reported that the move was also made in order to avoid mix-up of non-veg and vegetarian meals, as this has happened in the past.

Despite the official reason given, many people are seeing this move as a discriminatory practice as most of the Hindus are vegetarians whereas people of other religions eat meat as well.

Since Indian prime minister Nerandra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party members are vegetarians and they continue to remain in power, this move is also being seen as part of a wave of religious nationalism sweeping the country.

“Only veg food on Air India,” Madhu Menon, a Bangalore-based chef and food writer, wrote on Twitter. “Next, flight attendants to speak only Hindi. After that, stand for national anthem before flight take-off.”

One user also wrote that if the motive was to cut costs, the airline could have served only a small snack as the serving of vegetarian dishes to cut costs does not make sense.

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Posted by fatimaarshad on Jul 11 2017. Filed under Latest News, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.