FROM BOOM TO DOOM
The Gulf is no longer an El Dorado for the average Malayali. What does their return mean for the state and society?
The Gulf is no longer an El Dorado for Malayalis. Almost 150,000 returned to India in 2018
It’s early in the morning, but the Kozhikode international airport in Malabar in north Kerala is bustling. Purdahclad women, along with male relatives, throng the arrival gates as the PA system announces the arrival of a flight from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Strangely, the cheers of seeing a relative home on leave from “the Gulf”, is missing. Indeed, this is no happy occasion for many. Many of those trundling out through the arrival gates are making their last exit. They will not be returning.
Even the taxi drivers don’t chase them for trips any more, knowing that many will not want to splurge on the fare. As the arrivals hurry off, taxi driver Mohammed Hakeem says, “That despondent look says it all. Nobody
wants to talk about their new ‘ jobless’ status. We have been seeing them come in large numbers in the past few months. Many of them use public transport to go home. They don’t want anyone to see them...”
The returnees join a burgeoning band of Gulf returnees in the state, left with no job and little to talk of in savings after years—in some cases decades—of slaving in the desert lands. Of late, you only have to look at the passenger lists of the cheap flights to see the ‘reverse migration’ trend. The Muslimdominated Malappuram district in north Kerala, which accounts for one-fifth of the emigrant population in the state, is the worst hit.
THE LOST ‘NRI VILLAGES’
Palace-like homes like palaces and high-rise commercial buildings are markers of the migration success story in Puthuparambu village in Malappuram district. Others like the Edarikode panchayat used to have at least two people from every home working in the Gulf. But the situation has changed in these villages, just as it has in many parts of Kerala. Now the talk is all about the “Gulf returnees”, reverse migration or ‘migration hump’, as
the social scientists like to call it.
Every day, inbound flights bring more of them back to God’s Own Country. The rise in their numbers in the past four years indicates that the state, which accounted for the largest emigrant population in the Arab states for decades, is witnessing a ‘Gulf doom’ today. Malappuram and Kozhikode in the north and Kollam in the south are the worst-hit districts, accounting for 50 per cent of the returnees.
The latest Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) 2018, released in January this year, estimates that almost 150,000 returned last year, over 7 per cent of the estimated 1.9 million people from the state working in the Gulf states today (it also accounts for 89.2 per cent of the total emigrants from Kerala).
Prof. S. Irudaya Rajan of the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, who co-paneled KMS, says reverse migration is going to be disastrous for the state’s economy. “Unemployment is going to rise and with it social unrest. We are staring at a massive crisis,” says Prof. Rajan. The CDS has undertaken seven rounds of the KMS since 1998 and the results show that since 2013, the number of returnees has increased dramatically.
But even as the slump continues, remittances have gone up handsomely in the past decade. In 2017, it was at an all-time high of Rs 85,092 crore, a jump of nearly Rs 16,000 crore from 2016 (Rs 69,170 crore). Deposits have grown exponentially since 2008 (Rs 40,411 crore), and analysts attribute it to three factors—a weak rupee, Gulf veterans moving up the ladder and earning more, and new, skilled migrants getting better pay.
‘The Gulf’ has been a dream destination for Kerala for the past 50 years. However, for the past decade or so, the Arab lands have been losing their charm. The Malayali diaspora is shrinking fast there, reverse migration showing a negative trend of 11.6 per
cent for the past decade, much higher than the 8.1 per cent it showed in 2013 when the expatriates first started losing jobs in large numbers. This was after the ‘Nitaqat’ nationalisation scheme was implemented in Saudi Arabia to ensure jobs for locals. Today, Saudi Arabia tops the reverse migration chart followed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“The situation is going from bad to worse in Saudi. I left in July 2017 and I had months of back pay due to me. And this, after working in Jeddah for 16 years,” says 61-year-old Muhammed Kanheerakoden from Puthuparambu. A school dropout, Muhammed used to work as a baker making kubus (flatbread) at a food factory for a salary of 1,600 Saudi riyals (Rs 28,800).
Noushad Oathupally, a social activist in the village, says this is the new reality in the “Gulf-loving Malabar”. “The dynamics in Gulf states are changing fast and their economies are under pressure. It’s no more a sure bet for our people,” he says. And the home state offers little by way of opportunities for the returning semi-skilled labour. “The state already has the highest unemployment rate in the country. There’s nothing but rejection, dejection and depression waiting for them back home,” says veteran social scientist N.P. Hafiz Muhammed, who has been studying migration trends for decades. Noushad adds, “Most of these people work in inhuman conditions there, and when they return, they have health problems. A lot of them go into depression too. The state has to design novel programmes for their rehabilitation like it does for ex-servicemen.”
The 34-year-old never had the Gulf dream, though, despite coming from an “NRI family”. His father Kunjahmed worked in Saudi Arabia for 17 years, returning in 2003. Noushad finally got himself a passport in March 2018 after his friends pestered him to come visit. He’s yet to take that trip, though.