‘Do you mean slaves, sir?’ Mr. Burnham winced. ‘Why no, Reid. Not slaves – coolies.
Have you not heard it said that when God closes one door he opens another?
Those lines from Amitav Ghosh’s poignant work of fiction, Sea of Poppies, told the story of Indian indentured labour shipped out of their poverty in British India and sent into slavery on sugar plantations in the Mauritius. Slavery had been officially abolished by the imperial government but it actively supported and made legal the export of contractual labour, coolies who ended up living the life of slaves. Many works of fiction and non-fiction have been inspired by the tragic story of indentured labour.
While one must rightly condemn these inhuman excesses of colonialism and racism, it is useful to remember that Indian ‘coolies’ continue to be exported to the global market for wage labour. The Indian working class in free India has not been able to resist the temptation of overseas employment given the shortage of employment at home and inadequate remuneration.
The issue of ‘government-sponsored’ labour export has once again made news with the Narendra Modi government reportedly negotiating agreements with the governments of Israel and Taiwan to export unemployed semi-skilled and skilled Indian workers to these labour-seeking economies. As many as ten trades union have opposed this planned export to Israel on the grounds of worker safety since they would be heading into a conflict zone. Such concern and opposition has not stayed the hand of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Haryana.
The desperation of the working class was echoed recently in Haryana’s Rohtak, echoing the agonies of erstwhile indentured labour, where many had lined up to register for jobs in Israel, willing to even work in bombed out Gaza risking their life for a few Dollars more. A Reuters report quoted a worker who had lined up for a job in Israel saying, “If it’s in our destiny to die, then we can die either here or there. My hope is that we will go and do good work and spend some time and come back.”
Vivek Sharma, the 28-year-old mason quoted by Reuters said, “Yes, I am aware of the conflict, but I can earn a lot of money in a short time.” Sharma hoped to earn in a year $12,000 and added, “It could take me at least five years to earn the same amount of money in India.” Wage differentials have been at the heart of Indian labour export for several decades now. Israel is seeking masons, painters, electricians, plumbers and farmer labour.
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European colonialism has ended but the global demand for desperate Indian labour has not. The export of labour has been a key element of Indian trade policy since the 1970s when it was realised that homeward Dollar remittances from overseas workers were contributing to balance of payments management while easing pressures in the domestic labour market. Kerala was the first state to benefit from this external demand for wage labour. Its unemployed workers were readily absorbed into the Gulf labour market.
Gulf remittances have not only helped the economy of industrially backward Kerala but have become an important source of foreign exchange for the economy as a whole. Last year total inward remittances amounted to US$125 billion, a fifth of India’s foreign exchange reserves.
Soon after Israel indicated an interest in importing Indian labour, Taiwan too began negotiating with Indian government representatives, willing to provide employment for a 100,000 Indians at wage rates comparable to what local workers are paid. Taiwan’s minimum wage is reportedly $820 per month. This compares very well with whatever even a skilled labourer can make in India. Taiwan’s Premier Chen Chien-jen and India Taipei Association’s director general Manharsinh Laxmanbhai Yadav have signed a memorandum of understanding to facilitate labour mobility. Now that the ruling party is back in power one must expect this MoU to go forward. Taiwan is reportedly looking to hire imported workers in the manufacturing sector as well as on construction projects, agricultural and fish farms and as household workers.
While Israel and Taiwan have been in the news, Indian labour has headed wherever it could secure employment, including South-east Asia, given that overseas wages in most labour-deficient economies would be higher than in India’s labour-surplus markets. While Indians complain about illegal immigration of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas, many around the world are complaining about such illegal migration of Indians. According to United States Customs and Border Protection data 96,917 Indians were apprehended seeking to illegally enter the US in search of livelihood between October 2022 and September 2023.
Also read: How India Made Virtue Out of Necessity by Exporting Labour
Till recently Indian workers in many Gulf kingdoms were treated no better than the indentured labourers of the colonial era. They were not only cheated by touts at home, as in the case of indentured labour, but made to live in inhuman conditions in host countries, with no rights and no voice. To be fair, one cannot equate the conditions of the 21st Century contractual labour migrant to the desperate condition of the 19th and early 20th Century indentured labourer. The interests of the former are protected by international law and bilateral treaties, but this was not always so.
So while Indian politicians, diplomats and officials can wax eloquent today about the inhumanity of the colonial system, they are all too aware of the inhumanity of working conditions till recently in many countries where Indian diplomats have been forced to function as labour representatives, seeking better working conditions for Indian citizens. One former Indian ambassador posted in a Gulf kingdom told me that his was not a ‘diplomatic assignment’, he was functioning as a labour relations officer.
While state governments may encourage their unemployed workers to go overseas, it is incumbent on the Union government to protect the economic and social interests of Indian workers overseas, especially if such workers are being exported as a result of bilateral agreements between governments.
It is interesting to note that even within the British empire officials in the colonies dealing with requisitioning and supply of migrant labour differed with those viewing the matter from afar in London. It was the influence of plantation interests that swayed policy from time to time till finally in 1910 the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London directed that emigration of indentured labour be discontinued, or that at least the government ought not to be party to it, and that planters be allowed to obtain free labour from India without any government assistance or interference. This suggestion was rejected by the government of India in Calcutta. It was only in 1915 that the imperial government finally managed to abolish the system of indentured labour.
The Israel-Taiwan demand for Indian labour helps to highlight an issue that will not go away any time soon. This is the global shortage of semi-skilled and skilled labour in many countries and the desperate desire of many Indians to migrate in search of better income. If this is not legally permitted, the migration will go underground, as it has already done. Illegal migration out of India and into developed economies has risen and was recently highlighted by the French stopping a plane enroute to Nicaragua full of Indians hoping to end up in the United States.
One can celebrate the fact that the Indian diaspora, the community of overseas Indians, is the world’s biggest, having recently out-numbered the Chinese diaspora. However, one must differentiate between those Indians who may have been forced to migrate decades ago as indentured labour but are now happily settled in their host countries, middle class migrants who are living comfortable lives overseas, and a working class migrating in desperation, for a few Dollars more.
Sanjaya Baru is an economist, a former newspaper editor, a best-selling author, and former adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
