In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a call to all Non-Resident Indians to return to India.
"Our ancestors went to distant lands to explore new possibilities. Now opportunities await you in India. Times have changed; the world is looking at India with optimism,” he said.
It's been nearly a decade, and far from becoming a land of opportunity, India hasn't seen a return of its migrants. Instead, a harsh reality confronts us: Indians, desperate for survival, are now risking their lives by migrating to war zones.
On 26 February, India Today reported that Hamil Mangukiya, a 23-year-old Indian from Gujarat, who was working as a 'helper' with the Russian Army during its ongoing war with Ukraine, had died in Russia.
On 5 March, a 31-year-old Keralite, Pat Nibin Maxwell, died in a missile attack in Israel while working on a farm. Two other Keralites injured in the same attack are undergoing treatment in an Israeli hospital.
On 6 March, in a separate incident, Mohammed Asfan from Hyderabad, allegedly recruited into the Russian Army through a job scam, was killed in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
In short, three Indian citizens have tragically been caught in the crossfire and killed on foreign soil in the past nine days. Following the Russian tragedy, the Indian government deployed the sleuths in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate. The probe in different Indian cities has reportedly identified recruitment agencies that may have duped job seekers and trafficked them to Russia under false pretences.
Many Indians Are Desperately Seeking Work for Survival
The CBI says that it is conducting simultaneous searches at around 13 locations in Delhi, Trivandrum, Mumbai, Ambala, Chandigarh, Madurai and Chennai, and cash amounting to over Rs 50 lakhs, incriminating documents and electronic records like laptops, mobiles, desktops, CCTV footage etc have been seized.
The CBI adds that around 35 instances of victims sent abroad have been established and the identity of more trafficking victims is also being ascertained.
Meanwhile, Manorama Online reported on 10 March that two Keralites were arrested by the CBI in connection with the human trafficking case involving India and Russia. One of the arrested individuals claimed to Manorama Online that he was not a trafficker but rather a victim who was deceived by agents, sent to Russia, and then repatriated when he refused to work for the Russian army.
In all three tragedies that have occurred in Russia and Israel, it's evident that Indians have either migrated voluntarily or been duped by agents with false job promises and sent to the war zone. Unfortunately, these incidents expose the harsh reality that many Indians are desperately seeking work for survival and are willing to migrate even to war-torn countries.
Before looking into the pan-Indian unemployment situation, let’s go state by state with respect to the victims. In Gujarat, from where Hamil migrated and got killed in Russia in February, the unemployment rate is bad. In February, quoting Gujarat Assembly records, The Wire reported that only 32 of two lakh plus educated unemployed got government jobs in two years.
Telangana, from where Mohammed migrated and got killed in Russia in March, records a high youth unemployment rate. The Indian Express reported in October last year Telangana recorded a youth unemployment rate of 16.2 per cent, higher than national rates.
In Kerala, from where Nibin migrated and got killed in Israel in March, has the highest unemployment in the country in the category of people aged 15-29.
In all three states mentioned above from where job aspirants migrated to war zones, the unemployment rates are high.
'Jobless Growth', Decline in Frontline Jobs
Now, if we consider the pan-India situation, a recent study by IIM and BITS Pilani highlights a concerning trend: despite significant economic growth between 2004-05 and 2017-18, India's job market has not kept pace. The study reveals a decline in employment since the 1990s, with a partial recovery in 2004-05 followed by near-stagnation by 2011-12.
This phenomenon of "jobless growth" resulted in underutilised workers even amidst a growing working-age population (15-64 years old). The study further identifies a reluctance to hire in non-farm sectors, which have the potential to significantly boost the economy.
In India, around 40 percent of the workforce is employed in the agriculture sector and the rest are almost evenly distributed among the two other sectors, industry and services.
Unfortunately, despite the implementation of Make In India over the past 10 years, The Wire reports that the manufacturing growth rate has averaged 5.9 percent since 2013-14. The share of manufacturing has remained stagnant, standing at 16.4 percent in 2022-23, and manufacturing jobs have halved between 2016 and 2021. Over the decade of Make in India, the share of manufacturing in the workforce has declined from 12.6 percent in 2011-12 to 11.6 percent in 2021-22.
Make in India was launched with much fanfare, and the government set three major targets for itself:
Increasing manufacturing growth by 12-14 percent per annum
Raising the share of manufacturing in the GDP to 25 percent by 2022
Creating 100 million jobs in the manufacturing sector by 2022
In simpler terms, neither the manufacturing sector grew as expected nor did it generate jobs as promised.
Meanwhile, it was the service sector companies in the information technology (IT), banking and finance segments that created some jobs, where only skilled aspirants were needed.
Additionally, there are reports that the new frontline jobs declined by 17 percent to 6.2 million in 2023. The frontline jobs include essential customer-facing roles such as sales and business development executives, call centre workers, delivery personnel, marketing executives, and housekeeping, among others.
The Indian Government is Turning a Blind Eye
India's unemployment crisis is pushing citizens to seek work even in war-torn countries to support their families back home.
Unfortunately, bypassing established, safe, and orderly labour migration procedures, the Indian government itself is turning a blind eye to Indians flying to war-torn countries. Despite being aware of the ongoing conflict in Israel, the Indian government has authorized a private-public partnership company to recruit a large number of workers for Israel.
In the past, the Ministry of External Affairs used to halt labour migration to war-torn countries. Indians were prohibited from migrating to Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, South Sudan, and even certain parts of Iraq for employment. However, in the cases of Russia and Israel, the government remains tight-lipped.
In January, I read a potential migrant telling the media that he “is aware of the threat in Israel due to the war with Hamas, but it's better to die while working than to die of hunger without a job here in our state (Haryana).”
(Rejimon Kuttappan is an independent journalist, labour migration specialist and author of Undocumented [Penguin 2021]. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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