Out of sight, out of mind

We are glad that our 46 nurses who were confined in Tikrit since June 13 came home on July 5. Whoever is responsible for their release deserves the nation’s gratitude. But such ad hoc steps do not solve the long-term problem of institutional neglect of our overseas wage earners who contribute greatly to our economy. World Bank figures, quoted by our ministry of overseas Indian affairs (MOIA), reveal that their remittances were $70 billion in 2011-12. Between 2001 and 2012, they remitted $339.3 billion. This was more than the total foreign direct investment flow into India during 2000-2014 which was only $326,509 million according to our commerce ministry. World Bank and World Trade Organisation look at the migration-development linkage and feel that foreign remittances from migrants are “more resilient than FDI or portfolio investments”. Ironically we consider foreign investors as VIPs, but treat our less educated overseas wage earners, especially illegal emigrants, as undesirables since they have violated the Indian Passport Act or rules by not going abroad through legal procedures.

India created MOIA in 2004 to specifically deal with this problem. No doubt they have been able to achieve what could not be done when the overseas workforce was cared for by the ministry of external affairs. However, even after 10 years we do not have reliable statistics of the number of Indian migrant workers abroad. MOIA’s 2012-13 annual report lists only 18,000 Indians in Iraq. As against this, Iraq Business News (May 17, 2010) said that “at least” 50,000 Indians were working in Iraq, including some who had entered through Kuwait or United Arab Emirates when India had imposed a ban (2004-2010) on recruitment to Iraq. These labourers first go to Kuwait or Dubai and then migrate to Iraq illegally since better jobs are available there.

Admittedly it is difficult to collect data on illegal migrants who move from country to country without notifying authorities. Also, their employers render them virtually stateless by keeping their passports. Those who want to return on domestic emergencies are forced to approach touts who give them bogus documents — 12 out of 158 dead on the ill-fated Air India Dubai-Mangalore flight on May 22, 2010, had bogus passports. Our embassies are least helpful as they treat such migrants as criminals. Since these labourers do not register with our embassies, passport and consular facilities are denied to them. We acknowledge their problems only during crisis situations when regional politicians apply pressure. MOIA collects statistics through the protector of emigrants, eight field offices and our embassies.

They can also collect data through host countries where our labour is employed, with whom we have bilateral agreements. But this will only be on official migrants. India Centre for Migration, MOIA’s “think tank”, undertakes studies “on strategies to enable Indian emigrant workers and professionals to move up the value chain and to position India as a preferred source of qualified, skilled and trained human resources across a wide gamut of sectors”. Collecting data on migrants is not in their charter. I also suspect that they would not be consulting NGOs for information on “illegal” emigration since this is a bureaucratic body. This is sad since NGOs like the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which was set up in 1951 in the wake of the displacement in Europe following the Second World War, undertake valuable studies which are not done by any government.

In this respect the example of the Philippines, which encouraged labour emigration as a national policy for obtaining “demographic dividend” and to offset home unemployment will be worth studying. In 1995, they enacted the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act to afford protection to legal and illegal workers. Their 10.5 million overseas workers, including 1.074 million “irregular” workers, remitted $20 billion during 2011. This is 11.17 per cent of the country’s gross national product (GNP). Capturing over seven lakh new jobs in the Gulf during 2013-14 has been listed as their national priority.

In our case the new Emigration Management Bill (2012) to replace Emigration Act (1983) was listed for the 2012 Budget Session. We have no news on the fate of this bill. Emigration and legal experts had found several loopholes in the draft which does not adopt a rights based approach. This is because overseas labour migration from India had taken place without any government support. Till 2004, we thought that migratory labour was more of a nuisance. We recognised the importance of Indian diaspora only towards the end of the 1990s but confined our attention only on the educated and wealthy.

We have to realise that India has become one of the major “emigration” countries in the world. “The World Migration Report, 2011” by IOM says that the top 10 emigration countries in the world were Bangladesh, China, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. About 97 per cent of the migrants from South Asia were moving towards the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries. ILO statistics reveal that 175 million migrants, half of them workers, had migrated outside their countries. There is a human rights dimension as 15 per cent of them were irregular. “Forced labour” amounted to 20.9 million in 2012.

There is a security dimension in this, too. Law and order will be in jeopardy if we do not find employment avenues for our youth who form half of our population. Experts like Prof. K.N. Bhatt of G.B. Pant University have recommended that by “leveraging the demographic dividend” of the 21st century we can increase our gross domestic product by one-third. Otherwise it will result in a “demographic nightmare”. This writer has long argued that Kerala state, which was rocked by repeated “Naxalite” attacks between 1968 and 1976, was saved only by the “Gulf boom” between 1972 and 1983.