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International Labour Migration from Independent India

S. K. Sasikumar

I. INTRODUCTION

The migration of races across countries and continents has been a regular feature of human history. However, the quantum of international migration has now reached an extent where it has become a major factor in global change.  Never before have such large numbers of people left their country of origin, either permanently or for short duration, as economic migrants, or as refugees and asylum seekers.  The World Development Report 1999/2000 estimates that more than 130 million people now live outside the countries of their birth.

Migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries recognizing the importance of such world wide migratory pressures have begun to intensify their efforts in framing appropriate policy responses.  Such policy responses in different countries have mainly been the outcome of the pervasive impact which the large-scale international labour migration has had on their economic and social structures.  In fact, many developing countries in the world today are relying on remittances of migrant workers to finance development.  The annual value of remittances from overseas workers (who number around 35 to 40 million) are currently estimated to be nearly $66 billion – which is second in value only to oil in world trade and more than even the current level of international development assistance.

Increasing internationalization of production, trade and finance, globalization of economic networks, liberalization of the movement of capital and technology, rapid population growth in the South, high economic growth and low fertility in the newly industrializing countries are all factors that may exert additional pressure both in the migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries for larger international flow of skilled and unskilled labour in the immediate decades to follow. Apart from these factors, the Gulf Crisis of 1990 and certain post crisis developments in the Middle East – centre stage for contract labour migration in the last two decades – have also wide ranging implications for future international migration flows, particularly for labour exporting countries of South and South East Asia.

n an emerging global scenario where the immediate future is viewed as the ‘age of migration’, it is imperative that attempts are made, especially in a leading labour exporting country like India, to examine the implications of the contemporary migration flows so as to evolve a more purposeful migration policy framework aimed at the maximization and socialization of benefits from migration in the wider context of economic development.  This should particularly be based on the experiences India has had with labour migration phenomenon in the past.  It is in this context that an attempt is made in this paper to detail out the trends, pattern composition and characteristics of international migration flows in the post-Independence period. It deals with migration flows to the industrialised countries as well as to the Middle East. The paper also examines various aspects pertaining to the overseas labour recruitment processes in India. It analyses the information on different categories of recruitment agencies, their profile, modes of operation, efficiency and performance, regulatory mechanism and their impact and implications for migrant workers. It also highlights certain policy considerations on migration which India’s experience with labour export suggests.  

II. INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION FROM INDEPENDENT INDIA

In India, the migration of its labour force within and across its national boundaries is nothing new. India’s geographical position has ensured contact with the Persian Gulf region and South East Asian countries for trade in goods and movement of people, a contact which goes back to several centuries.  The migration of workers on a significant scale was, however, to come much later. It began in the colonial era and continues now to independent India.

Migratory flow during the period of colonial domination was very much tied to the investment interests of the colonial rulers and took place under their aegis.  For instance a great part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century witnessed a regular migration of Indian workers as indentured labour for plantations or mines in the British colonies; this migration was to far away places such as Guyana, Jamaica and Fiji, to not so-distant lands such as Malaysia and Singapore and even to neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka and Burma.

Since Independence, two distinct types of labour migration have been taking place from India.  The first is characterized by a movement of persons with technical skills and professional expertise to the industrialized countries like the United States, Britain and Canada which began to proliferate in the early 1950s. The second type of migration pertains to the flow of labour to the oil exporting countries of the Middle East which acquired substantial dimensions after the dramatic oil price increases of 1973-74 and 1979. The nature of this recent wave of migration is strikingly different, as an overwhelming proportion of these migrants are in the category of unskilled workers and semi-skilled workers skilled in manual or clerical occupations.

2.1 MIGRATION TO THE INDUSTRIALISED COUNTRIES

At the outset, it is important to highlight the basic characteristics of the labour flows from India to the industrialised countries in the period since Independence:

·     

•         Such outflows are made up almost entirely of permanent migration in so far as the proportion of emigrants who return to India, after a finite period, is almost negligible.

•        A large proportion of these migrants are persons with professional expertise, technical qualifications or other skills.  

•       For a overwhelming proportion of these migrants, the destinations are United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. 

Although these labour flows have continued unabated for long, it is surprising that there is no information, let alone a primary source of data, on these migration flows from India.  Whatever analysis have been carried out till date on the composition of these flows is thus based upon immigration statistics of the countries of destination (Khadria, 1999; Nayyar, 1994).

The available evidence on trends in migration from India to the selected industrialised countries - the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom - during the period 1951 - 1990 is presented in Table 1. Emigration to the North America began in the early 1950s but the numbers remained modest until the middle of 1960s. This emigration gathered momentum thereafter.  The number of emigrants from India to both the United States and Canada has steadily increased over the 1970s and the 1980s. In contrast, emigration to the United Kingdom was at its peak during the 1960s; its slowed down thereafter in the 1970s and stabilised at significantly lower level in the 1980s.  However, it is important to recognise some limitations of the database. First, the figures do not quite reflect actual emigration flows in each year, at least in the United States and United Kingdom, because the data includes not only immigrants expected on arrival in that year but also those granted immigrant status during that year after their statutory period of residence. Second, the evidence of migration from India to the United Kingdom is incomplete.  Third, there is no information for immigration to other parts of industrialised world such as Western Europe or Australia.

Table 1

Trends in Immigration from India to Selected Industrialized Countries: 1951 – 1990

Source:  Nayyar, 1994

Notes: (a) The above data on immigration are reported by country of birth for the    United States, by Country of last permanent residence for Canada, and by country of nationality for the United Kingdom (b) Information on immigration from India to the United Kingdom is not available for the period before 1 July 1962 because, until then, Commonwealth citizens were not subject to immigration control.

It is very clear that the United States accounts for the largest number of Indian emigrants.  The significance of these flows become more illustrative when we examine India’s share in total immigration to the United States during 1951-1996 (Table 2). It shows that Indian immigration in the United States which constituted less than 1 per cent of total immigration from all countries during 1950s and 1960s, registered a rapid increase during the 1970s, reaching a peak of 3.8 per cent that tapered off in the 1980s till 1991 but went on the upswing in 1992 at 3.8 per cent again and further touching almost 5 per cent in 1996.

Table 2

India's Share in Total Immigration to the US: 1951-1996

Note: For UK, data are not available prior to July 1962. Hence the figures on immigration to the United Kingdom in the columns for 1961-70 and 1951-90 relate to the periods 1962-70 and1962-90 respectively.

Let us now focus our attention on the occupational distribution of the Indians emigrating to these countries1. Table 3 depicts the occupational distribution of the Indians migrating to the United States for the period 1971-1990.  It is very clear that in the first half of the 1970s, persons with professional expertise, technical qualifications and managerial talents constituted a large proportion of emigrants from India to the United States. But their share registered a decline over time and by the second half of the 1980s the relative importance of white-collar workers and blue-collar workers among the immigrants from India registered an increase.

The occupational classification of the emigrants to Canada is depicted in Table 4.  It suggests that skilled workers in the manufacturing sector were as important as if not more important than professional, technical or managerial persons, while workers in agricultural sector became almost as significant in the immigration from India to Canada.

The contrast between the skill composition of emigrants from India to Canada and from that of India to United States is worth noting.  In Canada, the share of persons with professional expertise, technical qualifications and managerial talents was distinctively lower, whereas the share of skilled workers, and workers engaged in primary sector was higher.

Table 3

Immigration from India to the United States by Major Occupation Group: 1971-1990

The emigration of Indians to the industrialised countries can be explained both in terms of supply side factors as well as demands side factors.  Several research studies on migration of professional and technical persons from developing countries such as India to the industrial countries like the United States, Canada etc. have shown that the wage gap between the two destinations has significant and positive impact on the volume of migration, (Wei Chio Haung, 1987; Agarwal and Winkler 1984). These studies have also shown that higher per capita income in the host countries as compared to the home countries also has a

Table 4

Immigration from India to Canada by Major Occupation Group: 1971-1990

positive and significant impact on the professional immigration to the developed world as well as on the non-return of professionals, who enter the concerned country either as students or as temporary workers or as visitors.

It has also been argued that emigration to a foreign country is possible only if there is demand for immigrant labour in the potential destination.  Studies on immigration of professionals to the U.S. and Canada have shown that the annual immigration in each profession in the concerned country is inversely related to the number of individuals graduating in the concerned profession in respective countries (Macphee and Hassan, 1990; Akbar and Devoretz 1993).

The demand determined character of the third world migration to US and Canada is also reflected in the response of migratory flows to the changes in the immigration policies, of the two countries, that occurred during the 1960s.  Immigration policies in both these countries were essentially preserving the basis of national origins for allowing immigration till the 1950s. 1951 Immigration act of Canada and the Immigration and Naturalisation Act of 1952 of the US preserved discrimination in favour of European migrants.  This discrimination was ended in the 1960s. The ‘Immigration Act’ of 1965 of US finally ended the national origin system, and substituted it with overall hemispheric caps on visas issued.  It allowed a maximum of 20,000 visas to a country, per year, and overall 170,000 to the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 to the Western Hemisphere every year.  The 1967 Immigration Act of Canada adopted a point system to eliminate discrimination on the basis of nationality, country of origin, sex, colour, race or religion.  The gainers were the Asians and the Africans.  Allowing immigration possibly served the purpose of checking the rising trend of wages by generating a supply of technical and professional workers to meet the rising demand for these workers.  Both in Canada and in the US immigration from the third world, especially of third world professionals increased considerably since the mid-1960s.

At the same time, in both these countries, immigration was allowed only to the extent there existed excess demand for workers of different skill levels. The introduction of the 'labour certification', in the 1965 Immigration Act of the US, ensured that, immigrants who are coming primarily as workers have the skills which are needed in the US, and are not snatching the job from any US citizen. In the subsequent acts, namely, ‘Immigration Control Act’ of 1986 and the ‘Immigration Act’ of 1990, the ceilings were raised to higher levels.  Act the same time, ‘labour certification’ for those employers who employed immigrants was always employed in place, where a national could be employed.  Canada's immigration policy also adopted similar criterion since the 1977 Act, for allowing immigration only to those workers for whom there was demand in the country.  This ensured that immigration is allowed only to the extent, that the host country has a demand for the immigrant worker.

2.2 LABOUR MIGRATION TO THE MIDDLE EAST

2.2.1 Pre 1973 Period

Although migrant labour flows into the Gulf region were considerably accelerated by the dramatic oil price increases of 1973-74 and 1979, the region’s dependence on foreign workers dates to the oil induced economic boom which followed the initial discovery of oil on the Gulf shores in the early part of the twentieth century.  The development of the oil industry during this period had provided an additional need for workers in the clerical as well as skilled and semi-skilled manual occupations.  As the local labour available in the region had limited experience in industrial employment, the oil companies were obliged to import large number of foreign workers in the above said categories.  Available evidence, indicates that most of these foreign workers were recruited from British India.  Indians accounted for nearly 94.3 per cent of the total clerical and technical employees and 91.1 per cent of the total artisans employed in the case of a leading oil company, Bahrain Petroleum Company, in 1939 (Seccombe and Lawless, 1986).  In the case of another leading oil company in the region, Kuwait Oil Company, Indians accounted for 85.6 per cent of the total clerical, foreman and technical staff of company in 1949 (ibid).  It is estimated that by 1950, the large oil companies in the Gulf employed nearly 8000 immigrants from the Indian sub-continent (ibid).

Such large-scale recruitment of workers from the Indian sub-continent could be attributed to two factors: a) proximity of the region to the Gulf; and b) India being under the colonial rule, the leading oil companies, which were primarily British, hardly faced any procedural deterrents in transporting workers on a formal basis.

In addition to the formal recruitment channels, a large number of Indian workers reached the shores of the Gulf through informal methods. Evidence points to the fact that thousands of Indians, who reached Bahrain on their own, were absorbed by Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) during the 1930s and 40s. One of the prominent informal systems that was in operation was the following: In return for a ‘commission fee’, merchants and businessmen in Bahrain, often of Indian origin, would obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the state to import one or more immigrants. NOC’s were obtained on the basis of the proposed expansion of their own business. Once the immigrant had arrived and paid his sponsor an agreed sum, he would subsequently apply for employment with BAPCO. The company was, always willing to absorb such Indians for employment.

Apart from the role played by the merchants and businessman in the Gulf in encouraging informal migration, thousands reached the shores of the Gulf on their own bearing a high degree of risk.  Such a stream of illegal migration took place mainly from India’s West coast-Mumbai being the most important centre of origin.  These individuals were ready to bear the high risk of travelling in country-made launches, without any valid documents, mainly due to two factors: economic pressures at home and the massive demonstration effect of the amount of wealth acquired by the Gulf migrants.

Our discussions with people who migrated in the 1950s and 1960s using informal methods revealed that most of them did not find it difficult to get jobs in the Gulf once they reached there[1].  They were also of the view that Indians who reached the Gulf using illegal means were very loyal to their employers and this enabled them to obtain legal work permit with the help of their employers.  This aspect of loyalty being an important factor in the success of the early migrants has been well demonstrated in certain research studies.  In one such study, it is shown that 70 to 80 per cent of the return migrants termed as ‘successful’ in their migration endeavour attributed their success mainly to the loyalty which they showed to their Arab employers, especially in the early period of their working life in the Gulf (Nair, 1988).

This ‘loyalty’ along with the hard working nature of Indians was one of the primary reasons for the preference which the Indian workers got in the Gulf labour market during this period.  Another interesting development linked to the labour flow during this period was the formation of a family link and regional concentration among majority of the people who had migrated.  The sequence of the formation of such a link worked in the following manner. The trust which the Arabs had in the early voyagers initiated them to ask these labourers to bring more people if the Arabs required such services.  Responding to these demands, labourers used to bring them either from their own family or from their locality.  This perhaps may explain as to why there exists long family chains and strong regional concentration in the pattern of migration taking place from Kerala to the Gulf countries.  Labourers have been moving from Kerala to the Gulf in significant numbers over the last 30 years and the chief pockets of migration even from the start has been at centres like Perumathura, Varkala, Tiruvalla, Chavakkad and Tirur. These centres maintain their status even now as leading pockets of Gulf migration in Kerala.

As far as the occupational composition of the Indians migrating to the Gulf during this period is concerned, most of the Indians absorbed by large oil companies were recruited as clerical staff, skilled artisans and as semi-skilled manual workers.  The extent to which the Indians dominated the clerical, technical and artisan grades of the Bahrain Petroleum Company during 1939-44 can be captured clearly from Table 5.

As in Bahrain, Indians dominated the clerical, technical and artisan grades of large companies in most of the Gulf States.  Apart from the above categories of occupation, Indians were employed in semi-skilled and even unskilled categories of work force.  In fact, Indians accounted for nearly 23 per cent of the total unskilled labour employed by the Kuwait Oil Company in the late 1940s.

Indian labour reaching the Gulf through formal or informal methods and not employed by the big oil companies ended up working in the category of unskilled workers.  The types of jobs undertaken included gardening, domestic services etc.  The initial living conditions of the unskilled workers were inhospitable and there remuneration very low.  However, as these workers became more and more liked by their Arab employers, there was a considerable improvement with respect to both the remuneration and the living conditions.

For an Indian worker, the main motive for migrating to the Gulf was the substantial wage differential which existed between the two labour markets for the same occupational groups. Table 6 illustrates the wage differentials that existed between the Bahrain Petroleum Company and the CALTEX, in Mumbai, one of the highest paid oil companies India, in 1941 for three occupational groups.

In contrast to their relatively high wage rates, the living conditions of the Indian workers were far from satisfactory.  Most of them faced severe housing problems and were put up in tents in the deserts.  The situation improved in the 1960s as the large oil companies started giving more and more importance to the provisions of basic needs like housing, drinking water etc. to their workers.

2.2.2 Post 1973 Period

The oil price increases of 1973-74 and 1979 saw an enormous growth in the demand for foreign labour in the oil exporting States of the Arab Gulf.  The scale of labour movements into the Gulf was intimately linked to the escalation in oil revenues and the unprecedented rate of investment in the domestic industry and infrastructure of the oil states which this increased revenue permitted.  A small indigenous labour force ensured that the accelerated economic growth inevitably generated a demand for labour far beyond the capacity of the local labour market.  This sudden spurt in demand for labour was met by drawing labour from labour surplus economies, both within the Arab region and outside it.

The decade since 1973-74, saw a dramatic increase in the number of migrant workers in almost all the oil exporting Gulf States.  Overall the number of migrant workers in these countries rose from 800,000 in 1972 to 1.71 million in 1975 and further increased to an estimated 2.82 millions by 1980 (Birks and Sinclair, 1980; Demery, 1986).   The foreign workers’ share in the total employment in the six Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) members countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)) rose from 50.5 per cent in 1975 to 70 per cent by 1980 - the foreign workers constituting 49 per cent in Oman, 59 per cent in Bahrain, 78 per cent in Kuwait, 89 per cent in Qatar and 89 per cent in UAE (ibid).

Besides the overall dependence on expatriate labour which showed a remarkable increase in this period, a significant change which took place was the change in the ethnic composition of the migrant labour force.  As revealed in the earlier section, the Gulf labour markets had used the services of migrant labour in a significant manner right from the beginning of the twentieth century but the major portion of the labour requirements of the rich Arab States was met by drawing labour from poor Arab States.  In fact, of the total 1.71 million migrant workers in the Middle East in 1975, almost 73 per cent were Arabs (Weiner, 1982; Madhavan, 1985; ibid). The next largest group comprised of workers of Asian origin-20 per cent.  However, this trend started showing a reversal from the 1970s, as the flow of Asian labour migrants to the Middle East accelerated to a great extent. Though there are different factors which may explain this reversal in trend, the ones that stand out are: the sharp increase in demand for labour, the availability of more productive workers from the Indian sub-continent readily and cheaply in a relatively well organised manner and the entry of South East Asian countries into the Middle East labour markets through national contracting firms.  These firms brought in labour for their project and established work camps for the project duration - providing most of the necessary housing, utility and health services to the workers. This approach proved attractive to host countries as it provided for the physical separation of the expatriate workers from the local community, lowered recruitment costs and alleviated pressures on services like housing.

Though the flow of Asian labour as contract workers to the Gulf gained considerable momentum from 1973-74, it reached its peak during the period 1977-82 when the developmental activities in industry and infrastructure were at a maximum in the Gulf.  This trend is well captured in Table 7 which represents the annual outflow of contract migrant workers to the Middle East from the major labour exporting countries during the period 1977-1982.

Table 7

Annual Outflow of Contract Migrant Workers to the Middle East from Major Asian Labour Exporting Countries: 1977-82

Source: Amjad (1989), Table 1.1, p. 6

Although Indian labour flows to the Middle East have attained substantial dimensions in the last two decades, lack of data about this movement of people has often bedeviled systematic appraisals of this phenomenon.  This is not to say that statistical details about the migrant labour flows to the Middle East do not exist.  Apart from certain Government estimates, attempts have been made to arrive at reasonably accurate statistics on the volume of Indian population in different countries.  However, none of them have been able to present a complete picture (Sasikumar, 1995a, 1995b).  There still exist significant gaps that restrict the systematic analysis of volume of labour flows and its ramifications.  Nevertheless, by piecing together the available information, certain broad orders of magnitude and trends can be discerned.

The primary source of information on out migration from India is the data published by the Protectorate General of Emigrants, Ministry of Labour, Government of India.  This annual data depict the number of those who require and had actually obtained emigration clearances from the Protector General of Emigrants, while migrating abroad to seek employment.  For several reasons, this data provides only a partial information as to the magnitude of out migrating population from India.  Section 22 of the Emigration Act, 1983 provides no citizen of India shall emigrate unless he obtains emigration clearance from the Protector of Emigrants.  However, the Act exempts some categories of people for whom the Emigration Check is Not Required (ECNR Category).  The ECNR category of migrants affects the reliability of the data, as their numbers are not captured by the emigration data.  Over and above, outflow of this proportion of the labour force (ECNR Category) to the Middle East has been on an increase from the mid 80’s due to two reasons: (a) change in demand composition in the Middle East labour market in favour of skilled labour and (b) bringing in of more and more sections of people under the ECNR category.

The partial nature of this data is further compounded on account of illegal migration which does not get reflected in the statistical figures of out migrant labour, the main modus operandi of this is through the manipulation of tourist and business visas.  Those persons, whose passports have been endorsed under the category emigrant check required, have to obtain  ‘suspension’ from the requirement of obtaining emigration clearances if they intend to travel abroad for non-employment purposes.  While provisions have been made to safeguard against the misuse of  ‘suspension’, it is a matter of common knowledge that considerable number of people who obtain suspension to visit the Middle East, do not return and manage to secure a job there with the help of their relatives or acquaintances (Sasikumar, 1995a; Varma and Sasikumar, 1994).

The trends in the annual outflow of migrant labour from India to the Middle East during the peak period, 1976-82 based on available statistics on emigration clearance are outlined in the Table 8.

The data clearly shows that outmigration which was a mere 4200 in 1976, increased at a phenomenal rate through the late 1970s and reached its acme with more than 2.76 lakhs in 1981.  It then went on to decline in 1982-a decline which accelerated over the next few years, the detailed analysis of which is provided below.

Within India, the migration to the Middle East has been from a few concentrated regions.  Information on the subject is neither comprehensive nor continuous.  However, for the State of Kerala which has contributed significantly to the outflow of workers to the Middle East, some information is available.  Though many Keralities reached the shores of the Gulf even prior to the boom period, the flow accelerated during the period in consideration.

Efforts were made at the State Government level to arrive at some estimates on the number of Keralities working in the Middle East and accordingly the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Kerala, conducted two surveys-one towards the end of 1977 and another in the beginning of 1980 in which information was canvassed on migrants abroad and their location.  The latter survey also collected information on the educational qualifications and the skills of the migrants.  According to it, out of the 208 thousand Keralities working abroad as many as 186.5 thousand were working in the Middle East in early 1980. Assuming that there were 350,000 Indian workers in the Middle East in 1979 (Gulati and Modi, 1983), Keralities thus would have formed about half of the Indian workers in the Middle East.

If one were to examine the factors behind the large-scale migration from Kerala, those that stand out are the high rate of unemployment within the state and the lack of opportunities for employment at home.  Apart from that, the loyalty of Keralities who migrated prior to the boom period to their employers provided further opportunities to their friends and family to obtain employment in the Gulf.

Turning to the skill-mix of the migrant workers, we are again faced with paucity of data to make any systematic analysis.  The available data is restricted to certain rough estimates made by individual researchers on the basis of sample surveys and some figures pertaining to certain periods published by the Government sources.

From the available estimates, it can however be clearly gauged that the majority of the migrants belonged to the unskilled and semi-skilled category while only 10 per cent were in the professional category.  One of the estimates holds that 14 per cent of the migrant workers were employed in professional, technical and managerial occupations, while about two-thirds were semi-skilled or unskilled workers (Eevit and Zachariah, 1978). Such type of skill-composition among the migrant labourers may be explained by the structure of demand which prevailed in the Middle East labour market, more than anything else.  In fact the demand structure and hence the composition of the labour force in the Middle East labour market were to undergo significant changes in the period after the oil boom, the detailed discussion of which is taken up later in this essay.

The mode of recruitment to the Gulf from the Indian labour market during this period got slightly more organised than the earlier period.  It however, remained largely dependent on the personal efforts initiated by the potential job seekers.  Most of the people who reached the shores of the Gulf during this period resorted to the help rendered by their friends and relatives working in Gulf for obtaining a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to reach the Gulf and obtain employment there.  In a study relating to this issue, it was found that 71 per cent of the sample respondents (Gulf returnees) used the services of either their friends or relatives to obtain an NOC and to make other arrangements to reach the shores of the Middle East (Nair, 1988).

Since the recruitment of migrant workers took place mainly through private (informal) channels, there was no provision for formal arrangements to advise prospective migrants on the socio-economic, political and cultural environment to which they were proceeding or on the working and living conditions, labour laws, grievances settlement procedures etc. in the countries of their destination. The counselling services improved to some extent in the later periods.  The various Protectorate of Emigrants distribute pamphlets on these matters to the intending migrants who approach them for emigration clearance.  Other than the distribution of such pamphlets, little by way of counselling however takes place.

As the institutional efforts taken at the Governmental level to export manpower to the Middle East was very minimal inspite of the massive outflow of labour, this period saw the emergence of a large number of private recruiting agents who provided the necessary services for potential job seekers to the Middle East.  As there was literally no control over these agents, they charged exorbitantly for providing their services and also employed exploitative recruitment practices.  It was often the poor and the illiterate (who at many times thought that reaching the Gulf would solve all their miseries) who fell victims to the exorbitant charges demanded by the recruiting agents.  Along with this, there also cropped up a large number of illegal (fraud) agents who were chiefly responsible for encouraging clandestine migration. 

To begin with it was the non-existence of effective institutional arrangements in the labour exporting countries to export their manpower which gave initial room for employers in the Gulf to follow exploitative practices.  In the case of India, as mentioned earlier, most of the recruitment during this period was made by private recruitment agents and there was hardly any mechanism to check the foul practices followed by these private agents.  Further, the legal provisions which governed the emigration of Indian people was based on the Emigration Act 1922 which hardly met the requirements of the pattern of emigration witnessed during the 70s.  Private recruiting agents making use of the loopholes existing in the legal framework for quicker profits chose potential migrants as their targets.

In several cases the intending migrants were promised lucrative jobs having fabulous wages and air-conditioned accommodation by the recruiting agents who charged very high fees for their so called services.  Once the emigrants reached the Gulf they were not offered any of the said benefits and worked and lived in very unhealthy conditions.  None of these workers protested against this as they feared that any form of protest would cost them even what they had.  This suited the interests of the employers and conditioned them to continue to offer the same kinds of amenities to future migrants also.  Our informal discussions with many returnees mainly those who had stayed in Gulf for a fairly long time-revealed that there were numerous instances where Indian workers landed up in the Gulf without possessing proper agreements.  This enabled the employers to follow exploitative practices as any protest from the workers would result in their being punished for want of adequate papers.  In most cases, the employers using this helpless position of the workers to their advantages forced them to work overtime without extra payment and also provided them cramped and unhealthy working and living conditions.

The demand for migrant workers in the Middle East started showing signs of decline since the early 1980s.  This decline in demand for labour in the Gulf labour markets significantly slowed down the outflow of labour from most of the countries which had exported workers in large numbers to the Gulf during the boom period.  Before attempting to gauge the magnitude of this decline, with reference to India, let us first analyse the contributory factors for the slow down in demand for migrant workers in the Middle East.

There are no two opinions that oil revenues dominate the Gulf economies and hence play a crucial role in the determination of almost all economic variables.  In fact, the expenditure pattern in most of the Gulf States have depended on the oil incomes accruing and the link between the two has been well brought in a recent study on the subject (Birks, Seccombe and Sinclair, 1986). This study points out that the unprecedented rate of investment in domestic industry and infrastructure which the Gulf States witnessed in the 70s was mainly due to the massive amount of oil revenue flowing into them.  In Kuwait, for example the study shows that the government revenues grew by 144 per cent from US $9620 million in 1975 to $ 25331mm 1980 (current prices) while government expenditure increased by 175 per cent from 2644 mm to $7856 mm. The study further goes on to show the impact this increased expenditure had on the number of migrant workers absorbed.  In the case of Kuwait, migrant labour in 1975 which formed 70 per cent of the total labour force increased to 78 per cent by 1980.  It is against the background of this nexus between oil revenue - developmental expenditure- demand for migrant labourer - that we proceed to analyse the developments in the Gulf during the 1980s.

To start with, the developments in the beginning of the 1980s were such that it had an adverse impact on the petro dollars flowing into the Gulf States.  Coupled with the decline in the oil prices in the world market which adversely affected the Gulf States (who incidentally were the major members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)) was a reduction in production levels of oil in major OPEC nations.   In fact, the series of oil price rises since 1973 resulted in a rapid increase in the rush for oil exploration and development world wide.  This led to a reduction in the share of OPEC in world oil production - shrinking from 54 per cent in 1970 to 33 per cent by 1982 (The Economist, Feb 19, 1983). Among the major exporters of oil in Gulf, between 1979 and 1983, Saudi Arabian oil production dropped by 57 per cent; Kuwait saw its production cut by 68 per cent; and UAE’s output was trimmed by 33 per cent (ibid).

This oil glut in the early 80s made the Governments and the business realise that the future would not provide an ever-increasing dollop of oil money to be lavished on development.  Although there was still plenty of cash to support the on going developmental schemes and still more tucked away in government reserves and businessmen’s foreign bank accounts - the situation demanded more careful utilisation of the same.  Evidences from most of the Gulf States indicate that there took place a reduction in development expenditure during the 80s, the decline becoming more and more significant from the mid 80s.  In fact the 1986-87 Kuwait budget included a 38 per cent cut in expenditure on goods and services and a 14 per cent reduction in spending and construction (ibid). This naturally led to a decline in demand for labour in the Gulf States.  The reduction planned in expenditure also brought in policies favouring a reduction in the number of non-national workers.  The Third and Fourth Saudi Plans included a commitment to reduce the number of unskilled foreign workers in the Kingdom (Shah, 1986).  In Qatar, the state departments were asked by the government to reduce the number of non-national workers by 10 per cent in 1985-86 (Owen, 1988).

Along with the economic downturn which was experienced by most Gulf states pruning the demand for non-national workers, there also developed in the 80s a feeling amongst the rulers of the Gulf States that employment of foreign labour was expensive and that a large contingent of semi-permanent immigrant population could turn out to be a political risk and hence employment needs should be met from within the Arabs.

The above factors, both economic and political, certainly slowed down the flow of migrant labour from the major labour exporting countries to the Middle East.  The decline was experienced by more or less all the major labour exporters to the Middle East.  In the case of Pakistan, annual outflow of workers to the Middle East declined from 141,416 in 1982 to 121,812 by 1987; for Bangladesh, the decline was from 62,186 in 1982 to 54,500 during the same period.  In the case of Republic of Korea, the decline was more significant as the number of workers leaving for the Middle East declined from 151,583 in 1982 to 44,753 by 1986 (Amjad, 1989).  This trend of decline in the outflow of contract workers to the Middle East was quite visible in the case of India also.  Table 9 depicts the trends in annual outflow of labour to the Middle East during the period 1982-1989 as measured by the statistics on emigration clearance.

It is very clear from the above table that there took place a significant reduction in the number of Indian workers migrating to the Middle East since 1982, the decline becoming more and more pronounced in the mid 1980s.  The decline may well be explained in terms of the reduction in demand for migrant workers in the Middle East, the factors for which have already been highlighted above.  The dramatic increase in the outflow of migrant workers from India to the Middle East during the period 1973-82 and the sharp decline experienced since then clearly points to the fact that the migration process from India to the Middle-East is more ‘demand-determined’ than ‘supply-determined’.  As India is a labour surplus economy the demand was always met easily.  The outflow has started showing signs of increasing trends since 1987 but the numbers migrating still lag far below the ones recorded during the peak period.

Turing our attention to the occupational distribution of emigrant workers from India to the Middle East, during this period Table 10 depicts the skill classification for the period 1984-86.

It is very clear from the table that the outflow of workers engaged in construction activities, skilled and unskilled taken together, declined not only in absolute terms but also as a proportion of the total out migration.  This can be attributed to the completion of major construction projects taken up during the boom period and also the cut in expenditure on construction followed by many Gulf States. In contrast, the percentage of skilled workers engaged in non-construction activities and also of white-collar workers and of high skill workers have registered an increase, showing clearly the changing demand pattern in the Gulf labour markets.  The need felt in the Gulf States for more and more investment of social overhead capital is shifting the demand for manpower towards professional and technical categories and away from unskilled and semi-skilled labour.  It is now upto the labour exporting countries to gear up to this changing labour market scenario.

Another important development that took place in the Gulf labour markets during this period was changes occurring in the supply-demand equations of the migrant labourers.  As explained earlier in this section, the Gulf labour market experienced a decline in demand for migrant workers during this period.  However, in the meantime, viewing the Gulf as an important destination to earn valuable foreign exchange resources, many labour surplus Asian countries entered the fray of supplying manpower to the Gulf labour markets, the outcome of which was the emergence of an excess supply of labour.  The main effect of the reduction in demand coupled with the excess supply was immediately registered in the Gulf labour markets through a reduction in wages and salaries.  There also took place large-scale freezing of fringe benefits and other perks.  As Mr. Abdul Basheer, who lives in Chavakkad in Trichur district of Kerala and who had worked in Gulf from 1973 to 1986 told us during our informal discussions with him. “During the 1970s I was provided an air-ticket once in every six months by my employer to visit my family at home whereas in the 1980s it was once a year to begin with and once in two to three years by the time I left”.  The willingness on the part of the migrant workers to compromise to such cuts in wages, salaries, fringe benefits, mainly owing to the high unemployment rates prevailing in the countries of origin and the desire to earn quick money, suited the interests of the employers as they could keep their labour cost down and hence enhance their profit margin.

Problems like flaying of contracts, untimely payments, overtime without making extra payments etc., which were highlighted in the earlier section continued to exist in the Middle East during this stage as well.  But thanks to the efforts made by the Governments, mainly in the countries of origin, the incidence of such events were lowered.  For instance, in the case of India, a need was felt to amend the Emigration Act 1922 which controlled the recruitment of skilled and unskilled workers from India to abroad as it was not proving to be an effective legal framework to protect the interests of the migrant workers under the changed pattern of migration phenomenon since the 1970s.  The rush of Indian workers seeking jobs in the Middle East witnessed during the 1970s had, as referred to earlier, led to a mushroom growth of recruiting agents who using the loopholes in the legal framework exploited the intending migrants.  Numerous cases started cropping up where the Indian workers who had gone to the Middle East with the assurances of jobs were let down in as much as they did not get the promised jobs in the employing countries.  Instances of provision of unhealthy working and living conditions were quite many.  It was under such a pressure situation that the Government replaced the earlier Act with the Emigration Act, 1983 whose provisions has to be implemented by the Emigration Division of the Ministry of Labour, Government of India.

This Act seeks to regulate the migration of workers from India in such a way that they are put to a minimum of difficulties during the process of emigration. The provisions of the Act streamlines to a large extent the area of recruitment, where several loopholes had existed in the earlier Act, and provides means to reduce the exploitation of workers by recruiting agents and project exporters.

The changes in the supply of and demand for migrant workers experienced in the Gulf labour markets resulted in the restructuring of labour flows taking place to and from the Middle East, the outcome of which was the emergence of new kinds of migrant labour issues in the 1980s.

During the seventies, employment possibilities in the Middle East were quite probable and assured. Under such labour market conditions, displacement of labour from labour importing countries were indeed very minimal. But the scenario changed towards the beginning of 1980s, since a declining trend for demand for imported labour became visible in the Middle East. Coupled with this was the excess supply taking place, the combined effect of which forced the migrant labour of lapse back to their native countries. It is not that labour migration to the Middle East was reduced to a minimum but the labour flow started taking place in both directions, the net result of which was the emergence of the problem of ‘return migrants’.

The process of return migration which began to surface posed manifold problems to the labour exporting countries. To understand the real nature of this trend, we need to explicate certain details peculiar to the labour migratory practices. In addition to the conceptual clarity which it renders on this recent phenomenon, it would also facilitate us to situate the issue in a policy perspective.

Return migration was occurring during the boom period as well. During this phase the return followed two forms: a) return for a short duration after the expiry of the contract, to migrate again. There was not much uncertainty in either renewing the contract or getting absorbed in some other employment in the Middle East; b) those who acquired sufficient wealth to support the rest of their life in their native countries returned permanently. These forms of return migration in no way created problems like rehabilitation/reabsorption. In general, such forms of return can be characterised as wilful or voluntary return. We represent these returnees as “wilful-returnees”.

With 80s, another form of return began to proliferate. Migrant labourers began to face serious deterrents in acquiring employment in the Gulf region, circumstances of which were mentioned earlier. In failing to acquire new employment, once their contract expired, the migrants were or less compelled to return to their countries of origin, often in a demoralised mental state (as they had gone with the expectation of earning much more than they did the desire having been derived from the fact that their neighbours had gone to Gulf and earned enough prior to their migration). We represent this group as “forced returnees”. The group of migrants who came for a short duration to the native countries and could obtain new employment avenues in the Middle East became more or less non-existent since the advent of the 1980s thus leaving the category of wilful-returnees exclusively with those who came back after acquiring substantial wealth. Though the preponderant character of return migration was of the forced or compelling nature, the flow of wilful returnees continued.

There was a marked difference with respect to the resource position, financial and physical, between the two groups. This skewed distribution of asset position was no doubt against the majority of the returnees during the 1980s, i.e. the forced returnees. Apart from this contrast, there also prevailed a wide variation in the asset structure even among the forced returnees. These inequalities were obviously related to variables like occupation abroad, duration of stay, saving-expenditure pattern etc. This informs us, in turn, the bearing it has on the specific nature of return migration and consequently on the aspects of rehabilitation/reabsorption. This, therefore, calls for detailed information about the occupational structure, resource position, investment capabilities, investment plans, etc. pertaining to the return migrants. However in pursuing this, we are faced with a severe paucity of information.

Let alone the specific variables we were referring to, there is no information whatsoever on even the number of migrants returning from the Middle East to India. Attempts have been made by researchers to arrive at the macro figures through estimations. Nayyar (1994) has made use of the figures pertaining to the number of people availing of Transfer of Residence facility and mini TR facility to arrive at the following figures of return migrants from Middle East to India. These estimates are depicted in Table 11.

It is very clear from Table 11 that return migration has picked up considerably since the mid 80's. Other estimates available on this phenomenon, though regional in character, also indicates the same trend. Under such a situation, it is imperative that efforts are initiated at the governmental levels to collect information relating to occupation, skills acquired, resource position, investment capability, investment plans etc. of the return migrants so as to plan effective reintegration/rehabilitation plans.

2.2.3 Emerging Trends in the 1990s

The oil glut in the early 1980s resulted in a reduction of development expenditure in most Middle East States which had an adverse impact on the demand for labour, thereby slowing down the flow of migrant labour into the region. Besides, most of the construction activities which were taken up in the Middle East in the 1970s and which employed large number of migrant workers had been completed by the 1980s resulting in large-scale displacement of the guest workers. This labour market situation forced the migrant labour to lapse back to their native countries in large numbers. Viewing this trend, apprehensions were expressed in many quarters as to whether Indian labour migration to the Middle East would be sustained in a significant manner in the next couple of decades. These apprehensions were further aggravated by the events relating to the Gulf crisis of 1990 which forced nearly 1,60,000 Indians to return home from the war-zones in distressed conditions (Varma and Sasikumar, 1994).

Contrary to such threats of declining outmigration, available evidence indicate that labour migration from India to the Middle East has picked up substantial momentum since the initial hiatus in the early years of the present decade. The revival of economic growth in most Middle East States and the large-scale reconstruction of the war-torn areas seem to have considerably boosted the migrant labour requirements in the Middle East. The trends in annual labour outflows from India to the Middle East in the 90s is depicted in Table 12.

It is also important to note that there has been a clear shift in the pattern of labour demand in the Middle East - a shift away from several categories of unskilled and semi-skilled labour and towards service, operations, and maintenance workers requiring higher skills - thus generating new opportunities for labour exporting countries.

Apart from acting as a ‘safety valve’ for the massive unemployment problems at home, migration to the Middle East would continue to be an important source of foreign exchange for a country like India faces severe balance of payments problems, at least for a couple of more decades.

III. OVERSEAS LABOUR RECRUITMENT PRACTICES FROM INDIA

External (international) migration system could be conceived as inter country flows of labour with all the accompanying institutions, procedures and networks.  Most relations between the sending and the receiving countries entail economic imperatives in terms of the above flows.  An individual from the sending country who intends to emigrate invariably passes through labour markets to become a migrant labour in the receiving country.    For our purpose, we will differentiate labour market as ‘external’ labour market and ‘internal’ labour market, and, to begin with, will highlight the distinctive features of ‘external’ labour market vis-a-vis ‘internal’ labour market.  Although Employer, Employee, State and Information Media are common to both, yet they differ to a great degree in the specific ways in which these elements get combined and the ways in which they give forms to the process of induction of individuals into the labour market.  The understanding of this difference is important for it gives rise to institutions and relations specific to each of them.  This is especially necessary as the delineation of the ways in which these institutions function constitutes the basic concern of this chapter.

The prefix ‘external’ is indicative of two principles of this division.  First, procedures involved in the transition of an individual into a migrant labour are external to the intra-labour market which are governed by the formalities of two different ‘Reasons of Nation States’. These procedures are external to both employer and employee in relation to their respective living experiences within their own environs conditioned by social, economic and demographic factors.  In other words, the procedures which have to be followed, particularly by the intending emigrant, are not yet a part of the normal activity of the home country especially when the home country is a developing one like India.

Second, the information network how so ever developed it may be has to cut across the boundaries of two distinct cultural and linguistic nationalities each situated far away from the other.  The rational choice and judgement which the employer and employee has to make about each other needs to be communicated either personally or through intermediaries.

It is these ‘external’ characteristics and the concomitant functional requirements, as distinct from the internal labour market, which give rise to mediating agencies and institutions and their pre-eminence within the external migration system.

The external labour migration takes place primarily on the basis of mutual relationships among the States (sending and receiving countries), Employer and Employee.  Before analysing the institutions and agencies which these relationships permit and make possible, the functions which bind the States, Employer and Employee need to be examined.  Schematically the functions are Procedural, Informational, Economic and Guarantee.

The ‘procedural’ functions are statutory in nature and must be abided by the employer and employee1. Informational functions include all communications required to enable the process of migration to take place in the best possible manner agreeable to all the involved parties.  By economic functions, we mean all those functions which are centered around economic imperatives wherever economic rationality is the principle of choice and judgement.  Guarantee function include all those responsibilities which a mediating intermediary by principle, would be obliged to fulfill under the conditions of flaying of employment contract or under any contingencies that may occur in the country of employment.  Depicted below is a diagrammatic representation of the way in which these functions link up the States, Employer and Employee.

Figure 3.1: Diagram of Functional Relations

These identified functions give birth to various institutions or agencies.  As observed earlier, the migration system entails a certain set of functional requirements.  Any one other than the intending emigrant or employer who meets these functions would constitute an ‘Agency’ in the migration system.  Agencies may vary in terms of the functions they undertake, the form in which they are organised, the motives which drive them to perpetuate as agents and the inter-relationships which each type of agent will have with employer, employee and the States.

The agency system prevailed in India even in a situation removed from the present day labour market. Under the provisions of the Emigration Act, 1922 of the British India Government, countries importing unskilled labour from India had to establish bodies to assume ‘proto-agency’ functions to control and regulate labour movements across the boundary (Rao, 1981). However, in the past, these ‘proto-agency’ satisfied the concern of the State in India.  In the present day labour market it fulfills mainly the functional requirements of the employee and the employer.

We can identify four major categories of Agency Systems as they prevail in the recruitment process of Indian labour to the overseas labour markets.  They are: Private Recruiting Agents, Government Recruiting Agents, Project Exporters and Personal/Informal Networks.  An attempt is made in the ensuing paragraphs to detail the functioning of these systems. The essay looks into information, primary and secondary, on different categories of agencies, to carry out an analysis of their profile, mode of operation, efficiencies, performance and their impact and implications for migrant workers. An attempt has also been made to describe the various functions and the different ways in which the formal and informal institutions render assistance to labour migration flows from India to the Middle East.

3.1 Private Recruiting Agents

The Emigration Act, 1983 defines a recruiting agent as a person engaged in India in the business of recruitment for an employer and representing such employer with respect to any matter relating to such recruitment including dealings with persons so recruited or desired to be recruited1. Recruitment, according to the Act, includes the issuing of any advertisement for the purpose of recruitment, the offering through advertisements to secure or assist in securing any employment in any country or place outside India and entering into correspondence, negotiation, agreement or arrangement with any individual in any country of place outside India2. Section 10 of the Act further states that no recruiting agent can carry out the business of recruitment except under and in accordance with a registration certificate issued by the Protector General of Emigrants (PGE), Ministry of Labour, Government of India3.

The Emigration Act, 1983 marked the beginning of the registered recruiting agency system in India.  However, in 1976 the Government of India, in a policy decision had laid down that those engaged in the recruitment of job seekers abroad should be registered with the Ministry of Labour.  This policy decision was made under two conditions: a) outflow of Indian migrant labour to the Middle East showed exponential growth in the mid 1970s; and b) remarkable increase in the number of private recruiting agents (PRAs) aiming to exploit the above situation which resulted in unhealthy competition and malpractices.  However, this regulatory control mechanism did not last for more than three years as its legal status was challenged in the Supreme Court of India (ibid).

According to the available information, between 1976 and 1979 about 800 recruiting agents were registered with the Ministry of Labour and they obtained permission to deploy abroad through them 1,11,715 Indian workers.

The registration of recruiting agents under the Emigration Act, 1983 commenced from January 1984.  Ever since 1984, the total number of registered PRAs are on the increase though this increase was relatively lower than what the recruitment industry experienced in the second half of the 70s. From January, 1984 till 31.12.1998 registration certificates were issued to 3077 recruiting agents (Ministry of Labour, Government of India, 1999). Majority of these recruiting institutions are located at Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram.

Let us now describe the PRAs in terms of the functional requirements of the employer and the employee.  As identified above, the main functions of the PRAs may be abridged into four categories: a) Procedural, b) Informational, c) Economic and d) Guarantee.

3.1.1 Procedural Functions

PRAs and the Employer

The procedural functions of PRAs begin with the receipt of the demand letter(s) from the potential employers in the Middle East.  Currently this takes place in two ways:

a) The PRA either advertises through the mass media among the potential employers as a suitable professional agency or the PRA, their representatives, commission agents, or friends directly approach the potential employers.  In order to obtain contracts from the potential employers, the PRA or their representatives may employ various strategies. This could range from offering the most competitive price, to establishing personal relationships and offering money to obtain the placement order etc.

Generally the recognised way of placing a demand order for job placement with a PRA is that the same has to be followed by the payment for the service rendered by him.  The payment is made after the successful completion of the deal.  However, the present phenomenon of PRAs paying money to the potential employers for obtaining demand order shows an inversion of the seller-buyer relationship in the market which is becoming increasingly a buyer’s market.  Till about the mid 80s it was primarily in favour of the seller, i.e. PRA.  The majority of the PRAs who were interviewed revealed that most of the large and reputed companies in the Middle East demanding labour for various job-categories insisted on payment of money for placement orders1. The money demanded could vary according to the number of labourers demanded, salary offered, relative supply conditions etc.  In short, if in the 70s and early 80s, it was the employer who was in search for a suitable PRA now it is the PRAs who have to make all out efforts to find an employer willing to ‘supply’ him with the demand order.

Under this changed context, non-personal and non-direct interventions of the PRAs in the labour market as searchers of placement order becomes ineffective.  Direct contact with potential employers has become inevitable resulting in intermittent travel of PRAs or their representatives to the Middle East, constant monitoring of the labour market situation using either the electronic medium of communication or resorting to commission agents1 - all of which add up on the expenditure side of PRAs balance sheet.

There are PRAs with outstanding credentials operating in the recruitment industry who still attract a great deal of employers and follow the rules of the seller’s market.  Nearly one-fourth of the PRAs who were contacted during the study maintained that they resorted mainly to media advertisements as a strategy for their self-promotion.

The Employer and the PRAs

Acceptance of demand order for placement by the PRAs is followed by the employer issuing the Power of Attorney to him simultaneously with entrusting the responsibility of finding the suitable candidates for him in the required number either fully or partially.  In some instances, the employer would demand PRA to only short-list suitable candidates for his personal evaluation.  In such cases, the PRA also arranges the venue for personal interviews.  Alternatively, the PRA himself may be required to conduct the selection process (scrutiny, interview etc.) and transport the worker to the place of employment.  Above are only two broad possibilities or methods of recruitment, the specific conditions may vary according to the preferences of the employers.

The PRAs and the Employees

The next stage in the procedural function involves the PRA and the intending emigrant.  As per the rules laid down in this regard by the Government of India, an intending emigrant is liable to fulfill certain pre-requisites before leaving the country for employment purposes.  The list of these pre-requisites include: passport, emigration clearance, employment contract, visa or work permit, medical examination certificate, police clearance certificate, return air tickets etc. All the emigrants are not liable to submit or obtain all the above documents or certificates.  For instance several categories of job seekers are exempted under law from obtaining emigration clearance from the PGE prior to leaving the country for employment.

Once the candidates are screened and selected, usually it is the PRA who assists the candidates to fulfill the required procedural formalities which have to be met as per the rules.  During the field work it was found that the help provided in obtaining emigration clearance by the PRA was largely sought by the intending emigrants1.

The Employer, PRAs and the Employee

The employment contract contains the terms and conditions of employment offered by the employer and acceptance of the same by the employee.  Usually, the PRA receives this certificate from the employer and obtains the signature of the employee either in his presence or through post.  The PRA functions here as a link between the employer and the employee - a function which makes them one of the guarantors of the contract.  The way in which this guarantee is central to the migration system would be discussed when the detailed account of the guarantee function is taken up.

Generally, there is no fixed format for employment contracts.  In case of Indian workers emigrating to Qatar, the authorities of the two countries have agreed upon a Standard Employment Contract to be executed by the employer and the employee.  This employment contract is often used as a ‘model’ to draw up employment contracts with reference to the emigration of Indian workers to other countries.

Upon the execution of the employment contract, the employer seeks the approval from his government and once it is received it is forwarded to the PRA.  This permission is generally called Visa/NOC/Work Permit/Entry Permit etc., and is the most important document in the external migration system.  This document is a pre-requisite to obtain emigration clearance, police clearance certificate, air-tickets etc. - and for most of the central documents concerning overseas labour mobility.  The visa may either be an individual or a group visa.  Once the PRA receives the visa, its copy is sent to the intending emigrant.  In case it is a group visa, the PRA normally arranges the overseas travel for the whole group.  Even in the case of emigrants holding an individual visa (which they may have secured without recourse to the services of the PRA), it was found that the PRAs arrange their overseas travel.  It is interesting to note that all the recruiting agents who were approached for interview (60 of them) were also travel agents.

Besides acting as a functionary within the external migration system, the PRA also performs certain functions other than his normal functions.  For instance, as an agent he arranges passport for the intending emigrants under certain contingencies.

3.1.2 Informational Functions

Since the country of origin and the country employment is spatially separated (in the geographical sense, which is not controllable) and the controllable variable, time (the span between the placing of demand order and the supply of the required manpower) has to be minimised, there arises the need for an efficient communication network.  In this section an analysis is made to understand how the PRAs perform the role of information channelling network.

In transmitting information, presently the PRAs have to intervene in a more or less structured situation which has been consistently changing form ever since the beginning of the labour migration to the Middle East.   The international migration system has its own pre-occupations and judgements about the market conditions and what PRAs can offer to the market, in terms of information functions, is accordingly limited by the existing notions about labourers and the employers.  For instance, Indians and Pakistanis are caricatured as hard-working.  An employer, may thus turn to India or Pakistan to meet his requirements of labour.  Again, the employer may already have adequate knowledge about certain reputed PRAs in either of the countries.  Any other competitive PRA will have to intervene to make his own presence felt.  Under such competitive conditions efficient information channeling becomes the thumb-rule within the migration system.

The PRAs and the Employer

An attempt is now made to describe the various modes of communication between the PRAs and the employer and to highlight their role in the dynamics of migration process.  Brief mention has been made earlier about the modus operandi adopted by the PRAs in communicating with the employer and vice-versa.  It takes place through two modes: a) Direct Mode; and b) Indirect Mode.

The direct mode includes print media, i.e. newspaper, the Government Gazettes of the labour receiving countries and advertisements that appear in audio and videotapes.  The indirect mode includes personal meetings either by the PRA, his representatives, commission agents, friends or relatives with the potential employers.

The increasing predominance of the indirect methods is emerging as an important feature of the present day external migration system.  This is characteristic of the changes which will be discussed below.  As the terms of external labour market relations change (the reference is to the change in the terms of trade between the buyer and the seller), it becomes more the concern of the PRAs than the employers to publicise themselves and to relate with the other party.  Given this context, the PRAs have to employ more and more of the indirect methods of canvassing for employers.  Although indirect methods were prevalent even earlier, the intensity and its extent has become more competitive and widespread in the present context.  The increase in the indirect methods has not, however, come at the cost of direct methods.  Employers in advertising their requirements increasingly resort to national Gazettes and newspapers in their countries (i.e. direct method).  The constant monitoring of the fast flow of information is difficult for the PRAs operating in the country of origin and therefore, as a solution, they appoint or entrust this responsibility to any of the functionaries working under the structure of the indirect methods.  Thus, there is no competition between direct and indirect methods, but what exists is a supplementary relationship wherein a reciprocity between the direct and indirect methods make the information process more dynamic.  As a consequence of this increased preference for indirect methods, PRAs mode of operation also alters to a great extent.  There are frequent visits of PRAs or their agents to the countries of employment and the maintenance of a communication network in the Middle East, which enlarge their expenditure in obtaining business.

While the employer generally depends on print and audio-visual advertising, the PRAs resort to the use of telephones, Fax, e-mail etc. in order to establish whatever possible direct contact with the employer in the least possible time.  This indicates the relative position of the employer and the PRA within the direct communication mode.  Efficiency of the communication medium is thus of paramount importance to the PRA as compared to the employer, especially as he is operating in a buyer’s market. As the supply of information to and from the employer is always ensured and well received, the use of both direct and indirect methods increase considerably.

The PRAs and the Employee

In the communication network between the PRA and the employer, the PRA is more of an information gatherer than a supplier, but in the communication network between the PRA and the employee, the roles are reversed with the PRA performing the role more of an information supplier.  To transmit information about the various job opportunities among the potential migrants, the PRA uses both direct and indirect methods.  While the direct methods are restricted to newspaper advertisements, the indirect method comprises of a network of sub-agents/representatives/commission agents who bridge the geographical gap between the PRAs and the intending emigrants.  In a large country like India, direct methods alone seems to be inadequate.  This is more pertinent in the case of unskilled and semi-skilled categories where potential emigrants tend to be concentrated in regional pockets spread over the country and are not easily accessible in terms of the distance to the PRA.  Before attempting to detail this, an examination of the direct method of information channeling from the PRA to the employee may be made.

The only direct method, i.e. advertisements in newspaper, may be analysed to bring out its important characteristics1.  Generally most of these advertisements appear in National English dailies as the PRAs operate from metropolitan cities of India and try to target an all India market and hence their preference for the national dailies in English.  If their targets are regional they then advertise in regional language newspapers as well.  As distinct to this, the PRAs operating in small towns and cities, choose mainly regional newspapers or local English dailies for advertising job opportunities.

The Times of India is clearly the National daily that devotes maximum advertising space for Overseas Appointments.  An analysis of the Times of India, published between August, 1999 and December, 1999, shows that most of the advertisements for ‘Overseas Appointments’ pertained to skilled and professional job categories.  However, when advertisements were made for multiple posts of various categories in one company, they also included the posts belonging to the semi-skilled and unskilled job categories.  In these advertisements skills and professional categories constituted about 70 per cent, while the semi-skilled and unskilled accounted for the rest 30 per cent.  Available figures pertaining to the occupational classification of Indians migrating to the Middle East shows that nearly 50-60 per cent of them migrate to take up semi-skilled or unskilled categories of jobs.  However only a minuscule percentage of this emigration is reflected in the newspapers advertisement for overseas opportunities even at the regional level for reasons further explained below.  Thus, obviously the indirect mode of information channels are used to recruit semi-skilled/unskilled workers.

The PRA, the Employer and the Employee

Information about the employee has to be passed on to the potential employers for assessment, choice and selection of the suitable employees by the employer.  This takes place in two ways: a) the PRA arranges for interviews in the home country and along with the employer or his representative selects the suitable employees.  Personal interviews generally take place for the selection of skilled/professional categories of the work force.  While in the earlier days, these interviews were mainly held at Mumbai (where majority of the PRAs are located), presently these interviews are conducted at several regional centres; b) interviews are generally not required for the selection of unskilled/semi-skilled categories of labour.  In these cases the employer tends to rely on the discretion of the PRAs.

3.1.3 Economic Functions

There are several activities that centre around the economic imperatives prior to the transportation of migrant workers from the country of origin to the country of employment.  An analysis is made, now of these activities and the different stakes, of the participants in the migration system.  A ‘free-market’ economic relation exists between the PRAs and the employers whereas the economic relation between the PRAs and the employers is ‘State regulated’.  In other words, the PRAs economic relation within the home country is ‘controlled’ while his external economic relation is ‘uncontrolled’.

In law, there is restriction on the amount a PRA can charge from the emigrant for rendering his services.  The maximum amount which a PRA can charge from the different occupational categories is depicted below.

Expenditure of PRAs

a)  The initial expenditure that the PRAs incurs is towards their registration fees. As per the provisions of the Emigration Act, 1983, a PRA has to submit his application for registration along with a fee of Rs.500/-.  Apart from that, depending on the number of persons a PRA intends to recruit, he has to deposit a security amount ranging from Rs. 3 lakhs to Rs. 10 lakhs in the form of a bank guarantee.  The scale of security deposit is given below:  

b)     Generally, in addition to the normal office facilities, the offices of the PRA have to be furnished with modern communication equipments like Telex, Fax, e-mail etc. involving large capital investment.

c)     As noted earlier, there is a general inversion in the terms of trade between the PRA and the employer.  While formerly, the PRA used to charge the employers a placement fee, the PRA now has to pay to the employer an amount equivalent to about a month’s salary of each of the labourer recruited to obtain a demand order.

The PRAs maintain a communication network/representative system/agents in the Middle East to canvass for demand orders.

There has been a substantial rise in expenditures incurred by PRAs in sustaining their business. Most of these costs are transferred to the potential migrants who are willing to pay a fee higher than the prescribed legal limit mainly on account of economic reasoning.

Economic gain which is the driving force behind the labour mobility to the Middle East is a well discussed theme in the available literature (Mathew and Nair, 1978; Nair, 1988; Sasikumar, 1993). A discussion on this would only be a repetition.  But highlighting certain important features of this gain has significance for various purposes.

a)     There is a tremendous wage differential between the wage in the home country and the country of employment.  An unskilled labourer who may earn Rs.500-800 per month in say, Kerala or Andhra Pradesh1, may fetch a monthly salary of about Rs.3000-5000 in the Middle East.  Similarly, a semi-skilled worker with a monthly wage of Rs.1000-1200 in the same States may get a monthly wage of Rs. 5000-8000 in most of the Middle East countries.

b)    

        Besides in a labour-surplus economy like India the very fact that unemployed person gets an opportunity for a job is a sufficient lure to migrate.  Thus, the gain in terms of utility may be much more than the utility represented by mere wage differentials.

 )     The ‘personal linkage aspect’ of the labour absorption in the Middle East is another feature of the economic gain.  Once an individual migrates, the possibility of others (such as his relatives or close friends) following the same course is quite high.  It is important to observe that for a community of relatives or friends, the total economic gain is obtained not only through one persons but from all others who follow him as well.

      Conflation of the above three aspects presents the phenomenon of a kind of ‘multiplier effect’ at work.  This ‘multiplier effect’ provides strong economic logic to the intending emigrants in making excess payments without any hesitation to the PRAs.

3.1.4 Guarantee Functions

PRAs are legally obliged to be a guarantor to both the employer and the employee. The guarantee that the PRA owes to the employer is that the employees recruited by him possesses all the required skills to take up employment.  However, the need of this guarantee does not arise in cases where the selection of the candidates has been made either by the employer or by his representatives.  The PRA also gives the guarantee that the employees recruited by him abide by all the terms and conditions spelt out in the employment contract.  The guarantee that a PRA gives to the employee is that he would not face any adversity in the country of employment which may arise on account of the breach of contract by the employer.

There are many instances when employees violate the terms spelt out in the employment contract during the period of their employment.  Violations of the terms of the contract by the workers are frequent absence, insubordination, violation of the local labour laws and disrespect local religious or social practices.   Workers who are guilty of committing these violations are generally terminated from employment and repatriated. In some cases, the costs of repatriation are borne out of outstanding monetary claims of the workers.  In some cases, employers leave the workers to find their own means to return home.  In latter cases, the repatriation of the workers is made possible with the assistance of the Embassies or by their fellow countrymen.  In both the above instances, the roles that PRA plays as a guarantor is limited or and quite often non-existent. The PRAs in such specific cases may not experience any direct financial losses but the after effects clearly percolate down to them.  During our field work many PRAs maintained that they had lost their credibility, and along with the prospects for new business with many employers on account of breaching of contractual obligations by employees recruited by them.

The role of PRAs are more crucial as a guarantor to the employees when the employer breaches the contract and thus put the employees recruited by PRAs in adversities.  Common reported violations of contractual obligation by the employers include premature termination of contracts, delays in payment of salary and outstanding salary dues, occasional violation of minimum wage standards, freezing of fringe benefits, forced over-time work without rewards etc.  Migrant labourers seldom lodge any complaint against the erring employers for the fear of losing their jobs.  In cases where the employee decides to complain against the erring employers, he takes recourse to two options.

First, the employee may take the matter to his Embassy in the country of employment.  Most of the workers who take recourse to this option are those who do not have any means to return home.  The Embassy officials seek the help and assistance of the local government to take actions against the erring employers.  Apart from that, the Embassy also passes the information about the complaints made to it to the PGE office in India.  If the complainant was recruited by a registered PRA, then the PGE office refers the complaint to the concerned PRA asking for his explanation.  In most cases the PRAs maintain that they did not commit any violation and it was the foreign employer who had committed violations which fell outside the purview of the employment contract.  However, if the PGE offices finds the explanation unsatisfactory it proceeds with further action.

Secondly, the employee registers the complaint after he reaches India.  To facilitate the lodging of such complaints, a system of Public Hearing conducted at the PGE offices is in operation in India. 

The Protector General of Emigrants and other senior officers of the Ministry of Labour hold public hearings twice a week on Tuesday and Fridays from 11.30 AM to 12.30 PM at Shram Shakti Bhavan, New Delhi. Public Hearing System has been extended w.e.f. August, 1993 to the offices of the PGEs located in Mumbai, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Cochin, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram where intending emigrants, recruiting agents, project exporters etc. can meet the senior most PGE for redressal of grievance, for obtaining any information on various aspects of emigration, lodging their complaints etc. on every Tuesday and Friday from 11.30 AM to 12.30 PM without any prior appointment. During the period January to December, 1998, 1418 petitions were handled at these public hearings.

Details pertaining to the disposal of complaints from emigrant workers during 1.1.92 to 31.10.98 are depicted in Table 13.

Source: Ministry of Labour, Government of India

When complaints are received against foreign employers, the PGE office forwards them to the Indian Embassy in the concerned country of employment for taking necessary actions.  As in the case of first option, if the complainant has been recruited by a registered PRA, the PGE office seeks the agent’s explanation.  If satisfactory explanations are not provided by the PRA, the PGE office seeks the agent’s explanation.  If satisfactory explanations are not provided by the PRA, a case is registered for the violations and the case is referred to the police for investigation.  In some instances, the inquiry is conducted by the PGE officials themselves.

Employers against whom the complaints have been made, if found guilty through preliminary investigations, are blacklisted and this information is passed on to the Indian embassies and registered PRAs in order to ensure that in future Indian labourers are not supplied to these employers.  Apart from this, generally no action can be taken against the foreign employers as they are governed by laws of another nation State.

3.2 Government Recruiting Agents

In India, the first initiative from Government to promote, assist and sustain external labour migration began in the year 1977 with the establishment of a limited company in the State of Kerala named as ‘Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants’.  The intention of establishing this corporation was however much broader than simply to act as a recruiting agent within the external migration system.  It included such objectives also as establishment of other industrial and economic ventures in India as well as abroad, export of goods and commodities, establishing training institutes for skilled, semi-skilled, professional categories of persons etc1. Since then several other State governments in India started to take initiative in this direction with similar objectives.  For the limited purpose here these institutions will be examined only as ‘Government Recruiting Agents’ (GRAs).  Other objectives and functions of these institutions are outside the purview of this thesis.

Presently, there are 9 GRAs in India located in the States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and the Union territory of Delhi.

As elaborated earlier in Section 3.1, like the PRAs, these Institutions also undertake the four functions namely assisting in accomplishing procedural requirements, channelising information between the employer and the employee, providing guarantee to the employee and the employer and performing economic functions.

Unlike the PRAs where motives are profit-oriented the main organising principle of GRAs has been the promotion of external labour migration to alleviate unemployment problems and to resolve balance of payment crisis.  Although the legally sanctioned assistances rendered by both the PRAs and GRAs to the intending emigrants are the same, the specific ways in which they are undertaken differ.  The major after effect of the differences in their modus operandi may be highlighted.  In contrast to the PRAs, GRAs could bring down the recruitment costs to the legally stipulated amounts.  The PRAs have been unable to adhere to the legally stipulated charges except in the rare cases where the labour services of the migrant worker involve highly exploitative condition in the country of employment.  This difference in the recruitment costs is borne out of several factors.

Under the changed condition of the expatriate labour market, obtaining labour demand from the Middle East has become highly competitive and costly.  To attract more and more demand for Indian workers, recruiting agents have to incur increased expenditure which in turn is passed on to the intending emigrants.  This invariably pushes up the recruitment costs higher than the legally prescribed limit.  It also opens up the realm of illegal and clandestine activities, which the GRAs will not be able to undertake.

In order to obtain on the spot information about job vacancies in the Middle East, PRAs establish what generally may be called as sub-agents in different host countries.  These sub-agents forge a close liaison with employers thereby grabbing demand orders from them for the Indian PRAs.  This falls outside the bounds of legal jurisdiction of the Government of India and adds up to the recruitment costs.  This is another instance of the market strategy which the GRAs cannot adopt.

Now a look towards the mobilisation of the supply of labour to the Middle East.  In this regard sub-agents of the 

PRAs operating in different regional centres seem to be effective.  The GRAs cannot resort to this practice.  This seems to be an inevitable phenomenon under the present market situation.  This is perhaps why the mobilisation of the unskilled categories of job-seekers could not be promoted by even the most efficient (in terms of the number of people recruited) GRA, namely the Overseas Manpower Corporation of Tamil Nadu.  Of the total number of people recruited by them so far, the unskilled categories constitute only around 15 percentage.  This could be attributed partially to the fact that even to get registered with GRAs, an unskilled labourer has to depend on the assistance of some or the other intermediary.  To quote another example, Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants in Kerala have in their data bank details of about only 15,000 intending emigrants of which only a marginal proportion constitute unskilled categories1.

Among the GRAs the Overseas Manpower Corporation (OMC) of Tamil Nadu has recruited the maximum number of people for overseas employment.  From 1979, the year of their inception till 1996-97, they recruited 5400 personnel under different job categories2. Of this total about 50-60 percentage constituted professional/skilled categories of labourers, which, ironically, affirms the fact that GRAs have been rendering services to a class of people for whom the cost of recruitment is not as crucial as it would be to the unskilled/semi-skilled class of people.

In general what is observed is that when they come face to face there is an incommensurability between the ordering principles of the free market and the ordering principles of governmental procedures.  While PRAs play the game of markets, the GRAs have to restrict themselves to the procedural codes of the government.  But then the abuses and misrepresentations present in the working of PRAs or their sub-agents or those who pretend to be PRAs do not prevail in the case of GRAs.

3.3 Project Exporters

In terms of formal labour mobility from India to the Middle East for specific project work, the beginning could be traced to the period when the East India Company began to invest in the Middle East.  Under such conditions, there was no need for any separate agent to mediate between the employer and the employees to be recruited, for the employer did not belong to the Middle East, rather they existed in India.

Large-scale investments were made by the British Companies in the oil industry in the Middle East during the early part of the twentieth century. These investments gave rise to a sudden spurt in the demand for workers in the clerical as well as skilled and semi-skilled manual occupations.  As the local population did not possess the required expertise for such industrial employment, the investors were forced to recruit large numbers of migrant workers.  Most of these workers recruited to man the project investments made by the British were from the Indian sub-continent.  The procedural requirements for transporting these workers to various projects were minimal as the Indian sub-continent was under the aegis of the British rule during that period1. 

The post-Independence period has also witnessed large government and private limited companies in India undertaking investment in various projects in the Middle East and transporting workers from India to work in these projects.  The Emigration Act, 1983 has laid down various procedural formalities which the project exporters are required to fulfill prior to recruiting workers from India for working on the projects undertaken by them.  Unlike the PRAs and GRAs who mediate between the employer and employees, being direct employers the project exporters are not required to mediate.  Consequently, the provisions of the Emigration Act, 1983 applicable to the project exporters for recruitment of workers are different from those for the PRAs and GRAs. 

Initially, the project exporters have to obtain the appropriate clearances from the Reserve Bank of India/Ministry of Commerce before being permitted by the Protector General of Emigrants, Ministry of Labour to deploy workers abroad.  For project valued at more than Rs.2 crores, the approval of the Ministry of Commerce also needs to be obtained.  Once the clearances are obtained from the Reserve Bank of India/Ministry of Commerce, the project exporter has to obtain the permission of the PGE, Ministry of Labour to deploy workers by submitting an application. The PGE officials scrutinise these application forms before the final permit to deploy workers is granted.  Apart from this, the project exporters while sending workers abroad in a group are required to furnish Bank Guarantee ranging from Rs.20000/- to Rs. 5 lakhs depending upon the number of workers to be deployed.  The scale of security deposit is given below:  

While granting the permit to deploy workers there are certain welfare considerations which the Government of India puts as conditions to be abided by the project exporters.  The common conditions spelt out in this regard include: a) the wages proposed to be paid should not be less than the minimum wages prevailing in the country of employment for the same or similar nature of job; b) the employees will receive full wages during absence due to injury or illness; c) there should not be any restriction towards medical facilities to be provided to the employees and the facilities would be provided free of cost; and d) in case of any calamity, natural or unnatural, the employees would be repatriated at the cost of employer etc.

Presently, there are nearly 15-20 large companies, both government and private, who take up projects in the Middle East and deploy workers from India.  The number of workers deployed varies from project to project and one cannot arrive at any rigid average in this.  Most of the projects taken up involve either construction or engineering works and labourers deployed fall in the semi-skilled, skilled and professional categories.  Although majority of the companies take up their own projects, there are instances of project exporters who are sub-contracts too.  In almost all cases, the wages for the workers are generally paid in the country of employment and remittances are made by workers themselves.  As the projects are taken up by the reputed companies, complaints against them by the workers to the PGE have been very negligible. Our discussions with certain workers who had worked in the Middle East under different Indian project exporters revealed that the chances of exploitation in such employment were very minimal. 

3.4 Personal and Informal Networks

One of the earliest modes of labour migration from India to the Middle East could be characterised as ‘Personal and Informal Network System’.  This mode of recruitment has been based on kin, friends and other community members who mediate the out migration.  It is, they instead of any organised recruiting agency, who channelise information, provide resources, arrange legal papers like visa, emigration clearance etc.  This network resolve distance related difficulties as well as those relating to legal and policy matters.  Friends, kin or other community members of the sending country who have already migrated help the intending emigrants i.e. a former migrant becomes a recruiter.  The specific ways in which such networks operate influence the shape and magnitude of the migration flow.

At present, this network operates in two different ways; a) When a migrant worker returns home either temporarily or permanently, he brings with him Visa or NOC for the intending emigrants.  This could either be for sale or as ‘compliment’ to his near and dear ones.  Under the present state of labour-surplus situations, such compliments are considered as a gesture of obligation.  The existence of ‘Gulf Enclaves’ in different parts of India suggest the active operation of such network system.  In Kerala, the ‘Gulf Enclaves’ of Tiruvalia, Chavakkad, Tirur, Varkala, Kasanakotta etc. are examples of this active network system.

Not only do the former migrants comes directly to the assistance of the potential ones, but they indirectly also influences the flow.  In the ‘Gulf Enclaves’, for anyone migration to the Middle East is the first priority - a kind of ‘demonstration effect’ is in operation.  Further, return migrants who were pioneers of the early days of migration are, at present, patrons of this flow.  They provide advice, arrange visa, inform the procedures involved etc. to the young ones to migrate.

Although since the turn of the 1960s, institutionalised recruiting agents (legal or illegal) have started to function, the operation of this personal/informal network has continued unabated.  In terms of magnitude, nothing definite can be said about their relative proportion.  What is, however, certain is that at least within the ‘enclaves’, the proportion of other forms of recruiting systems which have been detailed in the earlier sections is less when compared to the proportion of personal/informal network system.

The personal/informal network have foundations not only in the sending societies but have roots in the Middle East as well.  The crucial aspect of migration is the obtaining of legal entry papers from the Middle East.  With their excellent personal rapport and liaison with their employers, those migrants who are already employed in the Middle East are able to get the required papers in an easier manner.  They have established such excellent personal relationships through their consistent hard work and loyalty shown towards their employers.  As the Middle East labour markets is transforming into a perfect buyer’s market, this personal/informal network is getting increasingly dominated by monetary interests.  Increasingly, employers charge a price for visa, NOC etc. which in turn is passed on to the potential migrants by those in the personal/informal network.  For the potential migrants this charge is still much lower when compared to the one which they otherwise will have to pay to the PRAs.

b)         Another manner in which the personal/informal networks come to the support of migration is when the migrant workers in the Middle East receives those who enter the Middle East without any legal papers related to work.  To elaborate, in recent times, intending emigrants cross the national boundaries of the receiving countries as ‘tourist’ or as ‘business personnel’ in search of job opportunities.  Those who have already established their foothold in the Middle East come to the assistance of such ‘tourist’ and ‘business personnel’ in their stay and search for jobs. As the direct recruitment system is being preferred by the employers, such stay provides greater opportunities to the job-seekers.

Even for crossing the boundary as ‘tourists’ and ‘businessmen’, PRAs in India play a very important role.  Their liaison with employers in the Gulf and with emigration offices in India, makes it is easier for them to arrange legal papers for anyone wishing to travel to the Middle East.  This form of labour movement is continuously on the increase sine the mid 80s.  The rapid increase in the number of ‘suspensions’ issued from the office of the Protector General of Emigrants in India partly explains this trend. Those persons whose passports have been endorsed under the category ‘emigration check required’ have to obtain ‘suspension’ from the requirement of obtaining emigration clearance if they intend to travel abroad for non-employment purposes.  While provisions have been made to safeguard against the misuse of suspension, it is a matter of common knowledge that considerable numbers of people who obtain suspensions to visit the Middle East do not return and manage to secure a job there with the help of personal/informal networks.

Table 14 presents the total figures of suspension and emigration clearance issued by the PGE during the period, 1987-1998.

While the country-wise figures pertaining to suspension are not available, a comparison of the total figures of suspension and the emigration clearances would throw some light on the impact suspensions have on the outflow of labour from India to the Middle East.  This in turn provides adequate empirical support to the active functioning of personal/informal networks in the external labour migration system in India. 

It is very clear that a substantial number of people obtains ‘suspensions’ and as explained earlier could be resorting to personal/informal networks to use this facility to migrate to the Middle East and obtain an employment there.

IV. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY PERSPECTIVES

The discussions taken up in the preceding sections have brought to the forefront certain important dimensions pertaining to international labour migration from India. This in turn necessitate suitable policy interventions. In this section, we highlight some of these policy related issues and suggest certain policy prescriptions, specially with reference to temporary/contract employment.

One of the areas requiring immediate policy intervention is with respect to the creation of an appropriate information system on the International labour migration phenomenon from India. The creation of an information system/data bank which monitors the inflow and outflow of migrants along with their profile is an important pre-requisite to make future contract labour export strategy more purposive and also to formulate effective reabsorption/rehabilitation schemes both under conditions of stability and instability.

The status of outmigrant data can be improved drastically be making the registration of entry by migrant workers mandatory in the Indian missions operating in labour receiving countries. The registers should also contain adequate information relating to work status and living conditions of the migrants so as to enable policy makers to frame appropriate measures for their welfare.

The nature of outflow data at home can be strengthened by a fuller utilisation of the data already available with government departments and recruitment agencies. A chief requirement in this connection would be the strengthening of the statistical wings of the concerned government departments. Apart from this, establishment of computerised counters of the Protector and Emigrants at all international airports in India will go a long way in strengthening database on migration. All migrants leaving or returning to the country should be required to register their particulars with these counters. This system will ensure that reliable data on outflow and inflow of migrants at any given point of time are easily accessible. The required software should be developed incorporating the relevant migrant related variables keeping in view the lacunae that exist in the necessary data presently.

The data relating to return migration can be strengthened by a proper use of the disembarkation cards in the major airports. Disembarkation cards can also be used to obtain the information as to whether the migrant worker is returning permanently or for a short duration.

In a country like India in which the States have important responsibilities and functions to perform in respect of education and manpower development programmes, employment schemes and development policies, data on migration are as much essential at the state level as they are at the national level. To ensure that the migrant-sending states obtain information on key aspects of migration taking place from their state, the data collected at the national levels need to be classified state-wise. Apart from this, it would be desirable if the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) conduct detailed surveys on international contract migration periodically, say once in five years in all the migrant-sending states.

To strengthen the information base abroad, an identification and networking of Indian associations operating in different Middle East countries are necessary. The Gulf crisis has highlighted the vital role played by various Indian associations and bodies in safeguarding the interests of Indian migrants in the Gulf at a time of emergency (Varma and Sasikumar, 1994). Apart from providing food, shelter and basic amenities to the needy, they also performed vital functions like the preparation of priority lists for evacuation entrusted to them as the Indian mission in Kuwait had to be shifted to Basra during the evacuation phase. Discussions with evacuees from Kuwait revealed that the majority of Indian migrants maintained a very close liaison with community organisations even in times of stability (ibid). It would be worth attempting at this juncture a proper identification and networking of these Indian associations/community organisations operating in different Middle East countries with the Indian missions there as the nodal point.

There is no doubt that migration of workers to the other countries have had significant impact on the balance of payments situation of the labour sending countries. The remittances of these workers, who are found to have a high propensity to save while working abroad, have on several occasions eased the adverse balance of payments situation of the labour exporting countries, India not being an exception to this. Stepping up of these remittances therefore assumes utmost significance in the present economic scenario.

One of the important ways to step up the remittances is to ensure an increased outflow of Indian migrant labour to the Middle East. It is important in this context that Middle East labour markets are closely monitored. This may be done through the establishment of a labour market monitoring authority in important Middle East centres. The authority has to carry out negotiations on various labour contracts and also study the nature of skill requirements existing there.  This has to be seen in the light of increased construction activities in Kuwait and the reported increase in demand for labour in other Gulf countries. The activities of the labour market monitoring mechanism in the Gulf centres should be linked with a comprehensive system of labour market information at home for all types of employment seekers.

Indication of a surge in demand for migrant labour in the newly industrializing countries, especially of East Asia and Japan is another noticeable development which requires close monitoring of a labour exporting country like India. The rapid economic growth and declining fertility experienced in these economies in the last two decades have resulted in a situation where labour demand far exceeds the local labour supply, the immediate outcome being that of resorting to migrant labour. Available evidences, indicate that the demand for migrant labour emanating in these economies resembles the pattern of migrant labour demand experienced in the Middle East during the 70s and 80s – i.e. a demand for unskilled and semi-skilled labour. The wage rate prevailing in these countries is many times higher than that in most labour exporting countries. Recent literature on this subject also points to certain amount of laxness in the strict immigration laws which were practiced earlier in these countries. It is of utmost significance that labour surplus country like India tap the potential for labour exports to these new avenues.

Although the issue of welfare of families, of workers left behind in the home country has come to be recognised as a potentially problematic one, there are hardly any policies in this area. The pattern of migration in the post-crisis period, where the migrant workers tend to leave behind their families and dependents for security reasons, strengthens are need for providing welfare services such as counselling to the families of workers. In this context, it may be worthwhile considering the constitution of a 'Welfare Fund' for Indian employees working in the Middle East. Such a fund can be utilised for a wide range of welfare measures concerned with both the migrant workers and their families. The Welfare Fund could also be a vital importance to women employees in the Gulf who are largely in the category of para-medical staff and domestic servants. The Gulf crisis has brought to light the adverse conditions that women employees, especially of the domestic servants category had to face, while their employers fled to safety. Many maid servants were left to battle it out on their own. The cases of physical harassment and sexual abuse that have come to light only strengthens the need to establish a Welfare Fund of a supportive nature. The Fund could mainly comprise of the contributions received from Indians working in the Middle East. Incentives such as attractive insurance schemes and tax reliefs should be offered to the migrants contributing towards the Fund.

Most of the problems faced by the emigrants and the intending emigrants in the recruitment process are largely due to their ignorance about conditions of employment abroad and the procedures of recruitment and emigration within the country. Therefore, there is a need to further publicise correct procedures for deployment of workers and conditions of employment in different countries. The publicity campaign should also highlight methods adopted by unscrupulous agents to entice innocent workers so that such exploiters are avoided. Registered recruitment agents should be encouraged to provide the literature concerning working and employment conditions in the country of employment.

Any policy intended to streamline the overseas labour recruitment system in India has to recognise, as a pre-condition, the important transformation that has occurred with respect to expatriate labour market in the Middle East, i.e. a transformation of expatriate labour market from being a seller's to a buyer's market.

The provisions of the Emigration Act, 1983 has enabled the overseas labour administration authorities in India to considerably reduce the exploitative practices in the recruitment process and thereby make the overseas recruitment system more effective. As per the Emigration Act, the fee that a registered recruiting agent can charge from the emigrant for the services rendered in the placement process ranges from Rs. 2000 for unskilled labour to Rs. 10,000 for professional workers. Under the transformed expatriate labour market condition in the Middle East, the expenditure incurred by the recruiting agents for the promotion and maintenance of their business has risen significantly. In order to match such a rise in expenditure, most private recruiting agents (PRAs) sidestep the law and charge a fee much higher than the legally prescribed limit. It is also true that most emigrants are willing to pay an amount higher than the ones prescribed by the law, for, as has been noted the total gain in terms of economic utility which emigrants obtain on securing an employment overseas in much higher than the utility of money foregone by them by way of extra payments made. In such a context, government may take a more flexible position and reconsider the amount of maximum chargeable fee. Such a reconsideration of the policy may also be rewarding for the Government Recruiting Agents (GRAs) who are forced to operate within the set legal framework in the transformed market conditions.

It would also be worth establishing a government system of offering low interest loans to less well-off emigrants to finance out migration. If such loans are granted on the condition that the employment contracts have to be made with the help of the registered recruiting agents, than it would serve also an important instrument to combat illegal recruitment system. Such a system of financing out migration may also ensure that those emigrants availing the low-interest loans would resort to formal banking channels to transfer their remittances back home. This would further augment the foreign exchange resources, which is vital for a developing country like India.

The overseas labour administration officials in India conduct frequent inspection of the PRAs offices and penalise those found to be violating the rules prescribed under the Emigration Act, 1983. Such inspection or performance evaluation of the recruiting agents, if coupled with a system of awards and incentives, could contribute in a significant way to the improvement of the quality of the recruitment services. Such awards presented by the government to the recruiting agents for excellence in their performance, may also help the recruiters to obtain more placement orders from the employers. In fact, the reputation of the firms is the key to the success of most recruiting agents in India. The performance evaluation may be based on a number of criteria such as quantum of recruitment, welfare activities, compliance with the rules and regulations etc. Suitable weights may be assigned to these criteria when evaluating and rating performance.

For a variety of reasons which has been discussed, the GRAs are in a disadvantageous position while competing with the PRAs in the transformed market conditions. While the PRAs play the game of markets, the GRAs have to operate within the procedural codes laid down by the government. Under such a situation, the government may take up some level playing roles. The overseas labour administration office in India may, for instance, contact various government departments/ministries in the Gulf countries in order to identify their manpower requirements, which in turn could be met with the help of GRAs. In fact, the government departments in various countries always prefer GRAs to undertake their recruitment needs.

Apart from the initiatives at the national level, it is imperative that a country like India, from where takes place a large outflow of migrant workers to the Middle East join hands with other labour exporting countries and International organisations to chalk out strategies at international levels to better working and living conditions of the migrant labour in the Middle East. This assumes added significance in the light of the recent appeals made by International organisations like International Labour Organisation (ILO) and International Confederation of Free Trade Union (ICFTU) to better working and living conditions of the migrant workers in the Middle East.

The important migrant labour problems that are perpetuated in the Middle East labour markets include, among others: a) duplication and premature termination of job contracts, b) the non-possession of proper work permits by employees, c) delay in payment of salary dues, d) occasional violation of minimum wage standards by employers, e) freezing of fringe benefits and other perks, f) forced over-time work without returns and g) discriminatory wage payments on the basis of nationality rather than productivity.

As a remedy to these ills, labour laws practiced in each of these receiving countries have to be re-evaluated. Once the drawbacks are identified, necessary alterations in the laws should made and implemented effectively. The main reference in this regard should be that of the four key ILO conventions on Recruitment, Engagement, Working Conditions and Social Security Benefits for Migrant Workers. With concerted support from the labour exporting countries pressure can be exerted on labour receiving countries in the Middle East to ratify these Conventions at the earliest.

As initiatives from International Organisations have already come into being, labour exporting countries, should within their prerogatives join hands with the former to constitute a common forum. The Constitution of a common forum may progress through different stages: a) as unity among the labour exporting countries is the prime requirement, a podium like -South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) should be put to the best use to achieve this end, and b) in the next stage, such regional bodies should collaborate with International Organisations like ILO to execute the needed reforms and ensure that earlier errors are not repeated.

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