The fire disaster that killed about 50 migrant workers, most of them Indian, in Kuwait last week calls for reflection and course correction.
The woes of the migrant population continue unabated – from the Iraq-Kuwait war in the 1990s to the economic downturn or recession in 2008, to the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the investigations into the Kuwait tragedy are on, it would be worthwhile to look at the state of affairs with migrants from India. Indeed, the low-skilled migrant population needs more attention compared to the professionals and business migrants, as the former is the most vulnerable at the hands of avaricious recruiting agents, callous administration and a discriminatory host society in a foreign country.
The stats
In terms of both the number of migrants crossing the border (flow) and nationals staying in a foreign country (stock), India remains one of the leading sending nations.
An estimated 13.5million Indian nationals resided in foreign countries as of 2021, with West Asia being the major destination for migrants.
There were another 18.7 million Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) who are non-citizens of Indian descent residing in different parts of the world. Of the 32.1 million NRIs (non-resident Indians) and PIOs, about 9 million reside in West Asia, 4.5 million in the United States, 3.7 million in Southeast Asia, 1.8 million in the United Kingdom, 1.7 million in Canada, 1.6 million each in South Africa and Sri Lanka and the remaining 8.2 million in other parts of the world, according to Ministry of External Affairs’ data from 2022.
Indian migrants remitted an estimated US $ 87 billion to India, which amounted to nearly 15% of all global transfers to low- and middle-income countries. The total remittances in 2021 showed a six-fold increase from that of 2001.
The push factors
Sociology explains migration based on a number of theories.
Drawing from classical economics of demand and supply, the most traditional explanation highlights the push factors in the sending countries leading to out-migration. Economic challenges in the form of unemployment, systematic destruction of the agrarian economy, and overall underdevelopment (the push factors) lead to out-migration.
Concurrently, the industrialised countries need labor that is cheap and recruited on temporary contracts. Sensing a comparative advantage, the unemployed youth from the developing countries migrate to the industrialised Global North. This model has worked since 1980s for the migrants from India, when the Gulf region experienced an oil boom, but also in other countries like Singapore, and countries in the West including UK and Australia.
More recently, sociologists have explained migration highlighting other reasons too. Out migration is now explained as a fallback option for families, and as a culture developed in a region over a period of time. Despite the existence of these more sophisticated theories, the push factors continue to provide the main reason for out-migration in the case of low-skilled population from states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Laws and regulations
Since Independence, the Union government has instituted a number of agencies to handle matters of emigration. The Emigration Act 1983 was the harbinger of legislations that adopted a multi-pronged strategy to regularise emigration. Focused on promoting migration for the benefit of the individual migrant, and for the country in general, the Act set up a mechanism for hiring through government-certified recruiting agents. The Act also outlined obligations for agents to conduct due diligence of prospective employers, set up a cap on service fees, established a government review of worker travel and employment documents, created guidelines for the licensing of brokers, outlined measures to safeguard migrants’ rights in countries of residence and outlined ways to maximise the remittance potential of emigrants. A Protector-General of Emigrants at the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs was established to monitor migrant welfare.
However, the 1983 Act fell short of addressing the problems that arose as a result of high migration traffic, especially to the Gulf in the late 1980s. It had limited provisions to handle exploitative practices including hefty recruitment charges, contract substitution, deception, retention of passports by employers, non-payment or underpayment of wages, poor living conditions, discrimination and other forms of ill-treatment.
The Emigration Act 2021 provides more elaborate provisions for regulating the migrant movements. The Protector-General of Emigrants has been restructured into Bureau of Emigration Policy and Planning (BEPP) and Bureau of Emigration Administration (BEA). BEPP has the function of negotiating “labour and manpower cooperation agreements and memorandum of understandings, social security agreements, migrant and mobility partnerships and related framework with destination countries”.
Similarly, the BEA oversees a range of activities on a day-to-day basis, including periodical inspection of records maintained by recruitment agencies, rating overseas employers, establishing and running help desks in India and abroad, and maintaining a digital record of all Indian emigrants.
Civil society and welfare organisations
As states like Kerala benefit more than other Indian states from out-migration, when crises like the Kuwait tragedy strike, they bear the brunt. Among the 45 Indians killed in the accident, most of them are from Kerala, followed by Tamil Nadu. Along with the state governments, and the media, governmental and non-governmental organisations have risen up to the situation to help the families affected by the tragedy. Kerala witnessed similar instances of civil society groups and concerned citizens standing up for the cause of hapless migrant workers in the recent past as well. In April this year, civil society groups in the state collected crores of rupees through crowdfunding to pay for the release of a migrant worker from Kozhikode who was on death row in a Saudi Arabian prison.
Indian writers based in West Asia have also brought the misery of the migrant workers to light for decades. An eponymous big budget movie based on Benyamin’s Aadujeevitham (Goat Life) was in theatres early this year winning critical accolades from reviewers and audience alike. Although not characteristic of the experience of a typical Gulf migrant worker, the novel nevertheless depicts the plight of a low-skilled youth from North Kerala who endured slavery at the hands of a sheep farm owner in a remote Saudi Arabian desert. The trafficked and unlikely shepherd escapes slavery after enduring the ordeal for more than three years, only to be spotted by Benyamin who faithfully translated the experience into a bestselling novel.
A still from Aadujeevitham.
Ironically, the movie that depicted the heroic tale of endurance and survival by a Gulf migrant is produced by the same businessman – K. G. Abraham – who is the partner and managing director of NBTC Group for which the victims of the fire tragedy worked, in some cases for decades.
Ensuring safety in the living quarters and at the workplace
Low-skilled workers are accommodated in dormitories or shared rooms or flats. Crammed dormitories pose a threat to the physical and mental health of the inhabitants. Health hazards among the migrant workers increased manifold at the time of COVID-19 pandemic, when job loss and a forced lockdown took a heavy toll on their mental and physical health.
Similarly, migrants employed in construction have to endure severe weather conditions, and precarious situations on a day to day basis. Media reports of low-skilled workers becoming victims of accidents and succumbing to heart failures due to overwork in the run up to 2022 Qatar World Cup are still fresh in our memory. Migrants help build infrastructure, yet they are alienated from their own labour and the end products.
There is no dearth of safety protocol to be followed at work, as well as fire safety measures prescribed for living quarters. Timely inspection and periodic evaluation of safety measures can help ensure that the rules are not limited to print.
A return trend?
Migration scholars like Irudaya Rajan observe a trend of migrants returning to India, starting from the second decade of this millennium. This is mainly because low-skilled migrants decreasingly find a wage advantage following migration, when other costs are accounted for. The moot question waiting to be addressed by business leaders and policymakers is whether our economy is prepared to accommodate the returning migrants.
Rajiv Aricat is Assistant Professor in the Liberal Arts and Sciences Area at Indian Institute of Management Ranchi.
