Need reform in the emigration policy
The government is not so much clueless about creating employment, as Palaniappan Chidambaram says, as unable to stop boasting of imaginary achievements. If the organised sector had indeed created more than 1,100 jobs a day in 2016-17, as claimed by an official report, six immigrant workmen from Hyderabad would not have had to suffer such anguish in Malaysia. In fact, Indians would not have emigrated at all if there was any prospect of even selling pakodas, which Narendra Modi defines as employment, prompting Mr Chidambaram to mock that begging can also be called a job.
Little seems to have changed in Malaysia since the Sunday dawn in 2003 when nearly 300 Indian software professionals – also from around Hyderabad – were rounded up. “We were handcuffed and made to kneel or sit in the police station car park and our passports and visas were seized,’ said Nagaraju Cheekoti, an IT professional. “Some of us were slapped and kicked.” Some were ordered to do sit-ups, while others were stripped to their underwear and slapped and kicked. Police confiscated their cell phones and refused them access to telephones. The Malaysian visas in their Indian passports were defaced. The men worked for companies in Malaysia’s multi-media super corridor, the information technology project zone running from Kuala Lumpur to the new development of Cyberjaya, some 45 minutes drive away.
The Malaysian police weren’t choosy. Their victims included even some Indians visiting from Singapore. They might have fared worse, but for the spirited intervention of Veena Sikri, then India’s high commissioner. “This has been a black day for all of us,” she told the victims after arranging for their release. Such high-level interest is rare. In most places, Indian envoys are content to ignore the plight of humble Indian migrants. Things are different in the United States where highly-qualified middle class Indians migrate, but the exploitative pattern is repeated in Malaysia, Singapore and the Persian Gulf states.
Unscrupulous agents promised monthly salaries of between Rs 30,000 and Rs 40,000 in addition to food and housing to the six Telengana workers. Their passports were taken away on arrival and they received a pittance for their labour and no accommodation. Eventually, the men whose relatives in India say they were “tortured” took refuge in the Indian high commission in Kuala Lumpur and appealed for Sushma Swaraj’s intervention.
It’s the same story over and over again. Tempted by the promise of fabulous wages, unemployed men, without any hope of getting a job at home sell or mortgage the wife’s jewelry and whatever little land they might own to raise money for the fare and grease palms at either end so that officials look the other way as the victims of this cruel scam start their journey to nowhere. I have known diploma-holding engineers going to South-east Asia as unskilled labourers. It was big news locally but a shameful moment for other Indian expatriates when a Tamil Nadu lawyer said he made more money as a karung guni man - bikriwallah - in Singapore than he had practising at the bar at home.
This doesn’t concern workers but the attitude to Indians prompted Malaysia’s destruction of Hindu temples which in turn precipitated the emergence of the Hindu Rights Action Force which sued the British government for $4 trillion or $1 million for every Malaysian Indian.
The charge was that Britain had left Indians “unprotected and at the mercy of a majority Malay-Muslim government” that violated minority rights when Malaysia became independent. The petitioners also sought abrogation of Article 153 of Malaysia’s Constitution which upholds Malay-Muslim supremacy, as well as annulment of the Islamic status which, ironically, was the handiwork of the Indian-origin former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.
Ten years ago, complaints from neighbouring Singapore forced New Delhi to instruct Shashank, who later became foreign secretary, to investigate the emigration racket that is still rooted in India’s poverty. He found that collusion between officials and syndicates meant doctored passports and forged work permits. The Tamil Nadu government was persuaded to put up notices at bus stands and railway stations stressing the need for valid passports and visas, and warning of the dangers of working without permission or staying on after permission had lapsed. Many simple Tamils still believed you could go to the bus stand or railway station, buy a ticket, travel to one of the ports and sit in a ship bound for Singapore. Intermediaries exploited their innocence.
After Tamil Nadu, Shashank visited Singapore where nearly 9,000 Indian illegals in their early twenties were once arrested. Some could not afford a return ticket; others refused to leave jail after serving their sentence, finding life behind bars more comfortable than the struggle outside. Some destroyed their passports and tried to pass off as Singaporean. Altogether, 1,750 Indians were repatriated. Again, the high commissioner didn’t show any interest in their welfare.
That India’s main concern is to ensure harmonious bilateral relations was again evident in 2013 when long-suppressed passions exploded in riots after a bus ran over a 33-year-old Tamil worker in Singapore’s Little India. The Singapore authorities rounded up 300 Indian workers who may have sacrificed everything to work abroad. Given the Singapore manpower ministry's meticulous records, their prospect of future employment must have been bleak. This time, too, India’s high commissioner sounded almost as uncaring: India’s “strategic partnership” with Singapore took precedence over the well-being of workers.
Shashank reminded the Singapore authorities that these simple folk had helped to construct their first-rate country but instead of being praised, were being punished whereas the recruiting agents and contractors who exploited cheap illegal labour raked in the money. Asking for a more sympathetic approach, he also said violations were condoned until a labourer stood up for his rights. He might have added that thousands of labourers slaving for a bare living in the Gulf and South-east Asia send back more money than the overseas development ministry’s white-collar darlings who organise jamborees in London’s Wembley Stadium and New York’s Madison Square Garden and probably also remit generous donations to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
That relationship need not be grudged. But New Delhi must understand that India cannot be regarded as a buoyant country poised to take off as a superpower or even held in respect abroad if unskilled manpower is such a lucrative export. A separate passport for labourers, as proposed, will further rub in their lowly status. An active cell in Indian missions abroad to scrutinise employment contracts, watch over execution and inspect residential and recreational facilities in cooperation with local migrant workers’ centres would be more useful. But the only real answer lies in full employment at home. As the former Reserve Bank governor, Raghuram Rajan, indicates, instead of attending to that challenge, the government has helped to slow down economic growth with demonetisation and faulty implementation of the Goods and Services Tax.