The long history of India’s international labour migration, is an estimation of 30 million Indians, migrating between 1840 and 1940 with the majority of these migrants visiting the intra-Asian destinations around the Indian Ocean, such as Malaysia, Burma, and Sri Lanka.
When oil-rich Gulf countries needed workers after the 1973 oil boom, many unlicensed recruiters began operating, especially in Bombay. Reports of abuse and exploitation led the Supreme Court to call for stronger laws, resulting in the 1983 Emigration Act, which focused heavily on regulating recruitment agenciesthrough licensing and registration. However, this Act, created to manage how unskilled workers Indians can emigrate, mostly focused on protecting workers in India before they leave but did not ensure good working conditions once they arrive abroad. Thus, the article will (1) scope the realities of Indian migrants in the “Middle-East Dream,” (2) critically analyze factors that have inhibited change and (3) possibilities of socio-political changes that may better the situation going forward.
The Indian Migrant in the Middle-East
Living conditions for migrant workers are often poor, with most living in isolated labor camps far away from the cities. These camps are overcrowded, and inadequate in infrastructure to support standard living – lack proper water, sanitation, and transport facilities, etc. They also face extreme weather conditions while working, and many suffer from heatstroke or injury. In the UAE alone, hundreds of migrant workers die or commit suicide every year, with most cases not officially reported. Kuwait led with 23,020 complaints, followed by Saudi Arabia with 9,346, with most complaints revolving around non-payment of wages, denial of labor rights and benefits, denial of residence permits or their renewal, denial of weekly allowances, overtime or weekly holidays and forced long hours.
A 2022 study conducted by the Vital-Signs partnership, a coalition of non-profit organizations from five origin states and Fair Square, a UK-based non-profit, revealed that approximately 10,000 migrant workers from South and Southeast Asian die every year in the Gulf, with more than half of those deaths effectively unexplained.
Migrant workers are paid much less than locals, with most Gulf countries lacking legislation on minimum wage and conditions of work to protect them. Face delayed payments or even denied to be paid at all, female migrant workers face even more discrimination, with data showing a consistent gendered pay gap, with women paid much less than their male counterparts, even when they have higher qualifications. Domestic workers, who are mostly women, are often excluded from labor laws and lack legal protection.
In many Gulf countries, domestic workers are not even considered part of the labor force, making it difficult to extend labor rights onto them. Many migrant workers have their passports taken away by employers, preventing them from leaving or reporting abuse. They are not allowed to formation of trade unions and discourage strikes.
This legal exclusion is compounded onto by social exclusion. Such as children of migrant workers are not allowed to attend government schools, and many public spaces like shopping malls, discourage their presence. In some cities, single men, especially from South Asia, are not allowed to live in residential areas meant for families. This leads to a segregation between local citizens and migrants, making integration nearly impossible. This unofficial segregation not only prevents migrants from integrating into host societies, but also prevents the regular interactions and exchange between the ‘insider’ inhabitants and the ‘outsider’ migrants – separating the two populations neatly, with migrant workers confined to designated ghettoes.
Indian and International Efforts for Migrant Protection
There is merit in New Delhi’s preference for Government-to-Government (G2G) recruitment bypassing unscrupulous agents to ensure ethical recruitment. State-run agencies like Kerala-based NORKA Roots and Tamil Nadu’s Overseas Manpower Corporation facilitate ethical migration. The Indian government has also initiated the Pravasi Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PKVY) and Pre-Departure Orientation Training (PDOT) programs for low-skilled workers, who are most vulnerable in host counties. Equipping them with basic language, cultural, legal, and rights-based knowledge, the goal is to reduce exploitation and enhance their ability to integrate into host societies.
Moreover, Indian embassies in GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries have expanded grievance redressal mechanisms, legal assistance services and diasporic outreach. Emergency services under the Indian Community Welfare Fund (ICWF) provide medical aid, shelter, and repatriation support to distressed Indian workers.
The e-Migrate system, a digital platform launched in 2015 by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs aimed at streamlining and regulating the recruitment of Indian workers to Emigration Check Required (ECR) countries, which mandated employers and recruiting agents to register and obtain legal clearances through the online platform, ensuring greater accountability and transparency by ensuring that the terms and conditions of employment are clearly outlined and verified before departure. Although implementation has been challenging, government regulation ensures financial protection to Indian workers emigrating to ECR countries, covering death and disability, medical expenses, and repatriation costs making it a critical welfare initiative for vulnerable migrant populations.
The Indian government has entered numerous bilateral agreements with GCC countries to safeguard the rights of Indian-origin migrant laborers. For instance, in 2016, India and the UAE signed a comprehensive MoU to institutionalize the process of worker recruitment, aiming to reduce exploitation by recruitment agents. A similar agreement was signed with Saudi Arabia, the Labor Cooperation Agreement 2014, focusing on transparency in employment contracts and grievance redressal mechanisms. International pressures from migrant-sending countries like India, as well as international agencies like the ILO have also expedited labor reforms in GCC countries, most notably Qatar’s abolition of the kafala (sponsorship) system in 2020 and enactment of minimum wage.
Impact of Migratory Patterns on Socio-Economic and Political Futurities
Indian migrants the Government of India estimates that almost 90 per cent of migrants go to the Middle East, constituting 40%, the lion’s share, in terms of foreign remunerations. With the Gulf counties sharing greater cooperative unions, be it in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) or the OPEC, the Middle-Eastern states are heavier in terms of collective bargaining power, not to mention the obvious socio-religious affinities among them.
An estimated half of all migrant labor to the Middle East are South Asians. The failure of the SAARC (South Asia Association of Regional Cooperation) to stand out as an international actor, with South Asian states active collectively to bargain for safer and fair labor laws and protection In the Middle East. As SAARC remains dysfunctional over internal tensions among its member states, the rights of South Asian migrants to the Middle East – upon whom these states depend heavily on for remittances – remain at risk.
While migrants have criticized the Indian government for its failure to solicit greater labor regulation and protection – in terms of fair compensation, medicate, accident compensation, standard living and working conditions. Of the 11.4 million Indian migrants the Government of India estimates that almost 90 per cent of migrants go to the Middle East. This overdependence on the region to suck in Indian laborers gives reason to the Indian government’s approach to tread a fine line between lobbying for improving the working conditions of Indian workers and criticism of GCC governments, so as to retain friendly relations and continue to solicit Middle Eastern investments, Indian citizens contributing back home in term of remittances deserve to be a policy priority.
Therefore, there is a greater need for the Indian government to solicit concrete human security for Indian-origin laborers, in terms of employment benefits and protection. According to activists, the Emigration Bill 2021 improved on the 1983 law but did little to recognize the rights and contributions of India’s overseas workers. Instead of reflecting four decades of systematic abuse and exploitation overseas, the bill was more an administrative streamlining. The 2021 Bill, Nikhil Eapen, a specialist migration researcher wrote in 2021, “lacks a human rights framework aimed at securing the rights of migrants and their families.”
While the lack of opportunities back home drive, and lucrative exchange rates for international remittances, as well as high demand for low-cost labor in the service economy, pull Indian migrants to the developed Middle-East (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, etc.). In Amit Ray’s “The Enigma of the ‘Indian Model’ of Development” (2015), he noted on the lop-sided economic growth, with rapid expansion of high-end knowledge-intensive/service sector, parallel to the neglect of low-end labor-intensive industry, resulting in the inequality to the extreme: “a prescription for political volatility” and an unsustainable development model. Although the Indian economy has expanded over the last decade, the benefits of development have been lop-sided and unequal, facing a chronic problem of jobless growth. The problem creates a push force/incentivizes international migration for jobseekers. And even as the Middle East fails to implement standard labor practices, the demand for unskilled-and semi-skilled labor continues to draw Indian migrants.
There has been a simultaneous trend in recent years – a drop in blue-collar migration to the Middle East countered by increase in skilled white collar. Efforts at economic diversification by Middle Eastern governments beyond their overreliance on oil has created a boom in the services industry. With India’s technically-educated and service-oriented youth migrating for better opportunities to the region. Unlike blue-collar employments, the services industry is better regulated by host countries with standard labor compensation and conditions of work. This trend is further solidifies with the massive shift of Indian investment towards the Middle East, especially Dubai, where Indians constitute the largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) community, with simultaneous movement of high-networked individuals, form India, increasingly to the Middle East. The low-income taxes, higher standard of life, greater political stability, luxurious lifestyle hubs and economic incentives to by Middle Eastern states to foreign investors has encouraged this movement.
Migrants also have an impact on both the Middle Easter and South Asian societies – posing a didactic movement in terms of social impact. While the arrival of diverse populations have resulted in increasing religious toleration, acceptance and representation in host countries (e.g. building Hindu temples and churches in UAE, etc.), migrants returning home have also carries a sense of “Arabization,” specifically in terms of the import of Arabic Islam, vis-à-vis religious Farazi and Wahabi movements by migrant laborers, which have served to reinforce Islamization in South Asia, with radical Islam in post-Hasina Bangladesh being a recent example, dislodging more syncretic and flexible Islamic identities and traditions in the region.
The Indian Dream and the Indian Nightmare
While sheer enormity of the numbers tends to spin a ‘spiel’ in favor of the economic rewards for Indian migrants, the recent tragic deaths of 46 Indian migrant workers in a fire in an unsafe accommodation block in Kuwait is among the many illustrative cases of poor working conditions and vulnerabilities of this migratory group in the Middle-East. South Asian migrant workers in the Gulf countries, especially those working in construction and domestic jobs, face harsh living and working conditions. As they come on short-term contracts that make it clear they are not welcome to settle or integrate permanently. And, once they arrive, they are met with a difficult reality, with basic human conditions are ignored.
It is a matter of speculation if the Middle East dream is officially an Indian nightmare.
These threats to human security and dignity are amplified when instances of passport confiscation by employers make hostages out of migrants. The everyday hazards and structural exploitation of Indian migrants, who themselves come from vulnerable categories places compounding risks. The ‘powerlessness’ is interlocking. With unaware, un-empowered, Indian semi-skilled/unskilled migrants, from vulnerable communities, arriving from situations of low opportunities, are more frightful over the possibility of unemployment as a harsher reality for their family back home. This hampers their ability to bargaining. Further, the nondemocratic monarchical nature of governments in the Middle East also discredits any room for agency-fication, negotiation, or dissent over the situation by migrants. Where this voicelessness is further hastened by the lack of democratic politics in the region with strong nexus between the economic and political elites in host societies. While the Indian government has taken up such violations with respective countries, India, an emerg-ing economy is put at a tough spot in diplomacy due to its dependence on foreign remittances, with a bulk of it coming from the Middle-East.
Migration from India to the Middle East provides a commentary on both the place of origin and destination of migration. With unemployment pushing Indian migrates to respond to the demand for unskilled/semi-skilled labor from India see a rapid growth rate of 79 percent of total Indian migrant workers in GCC countries over the two decades. Conversely, the remittances sent back home have caused a shift in the consumption patterns of their families. The solution to the struggles of Indian migrants is not as simple as to discourage migration, but encouraging conditions for secure labor relations for Indian migrates to the Middle East. With nearly 83.1 billion USD or 2.8 percent of India’s national GDP dependent on remittances and India-Gulf region accounting for 9.3 million expatriates spread over the region, the Indian government not only needs to concentrate on increasing labor skills to meet the increasing demand for skilled labor in GCC markets; but also make diplomatic efforts to induce greater host country responsibility to regulate and ensure fair labor laws and treatment of Indian migrants.
About the authors:
- Allen David Simon is an M.A. (Political Science) candidate at the Postgraduate and Research Department of Political Science, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata (University of Calcutta). He is a Fellow, Pehli Peedi Fellows Program, The Future of India Foundation; and a Researcher and Academic Projects Coordinator at the Department of Academics, International Association of Political Science Students (hosted by the Department of Political Science, Concordia University, Montréal). He has graduated with B.A. Honors (Political Science) as valedictorian form St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata. Allen is a published commentator on post-colonial Asian political culture, specifically on the politics of identity and demographics.
- Sneha Banik is an M.A. (Political Science) candidate at the Postgraduate and Research Department of Political Science, St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata (University of Calcutta). She graduated with B.A. Honors (Political Science) as valedictorian from Loreto College, Kolkata. She has been awarded the Ratan Lal Dasgupta Memorial Gold Medal and Lina Law Memorial Scholarship for her academic merit. She served as the Vice President of Student Council of Loreto College, Kolkata between 2023-24. Her research interests lie in public policy and government legislation.
