[LINK] "Gulf crisis forces Indian construction workers home from Dubai"

[rfmcdonald]

Way back when, I posted a link to an article claiming that the Indian state of Kerala had managed to achieve a high standard of living for its 30 million-odd people through its innovative state-led economic model characterized by high investment in education and health care. Others pointed out that Kerala was actually heavily subsidized by a very large migrant diaspora's remittances, said diaspora being particularly concentrated in the Persian Gulf. As The Guardian points out, this is no longer working out, as the experience of the community of Sakthikulangara shows.

All the villagers had taken a big gamble in the past when they sold their fishing boats, borrowed money at usurious rates, and went off to work on construction projects in the Gulf.

But the building boom stalled last year - according to Morgan Stanley, real estate projects worth as much as £263bn have been delayed or scrapped in the United Arab Emirates. The knock-on effects are being felt across south Asia, which has provided formidable legions of labour to the emirates.

"Around 1,500 to 2,000 fishermen from Sakthikulangara were employed in prestigious sea reclamation projects in the UAE, such as Palm Island or the World," said John Cyril, a local businessman assisting the Gulf returnees. "Due to the recession, almost 90% are back."

[. . .]

About two million people from Kerala work abroad, almost 90% of whom are in the Gulf and in Saudi Arabia. Many are poor, semi-skilled labourers who have taken loans of up to £2,000, often from moneylenders, to pay recruitment agents for overseas jobs. They work 12-hour days, live without their families in harsh conditions, earn between £500-£1,000 a month, and send most of the money home.

Every year migrant workers remit some £5.5bn to Kerala, money that has helped transform the state, and metamorphose places like Sakthikulangara. The first time the coastal village saw a rise in its fortunes was in the 1950s, when a Norwegian aid project helped modernise traditional fishing. But as the seafood business dried up due to overfishing in the 1990s, the Gulf provided a much bigger bonanza. Testimony to this are the brightly painted concrete houses that have replaced the traditional thatched dwellings in the village.

"We can always find some work here, but to improve our lives, to build a nice house, we have to go to the Gulf," said Peter Benziger, who was forced to return last month after working for four years as a construction worker.

The communist-led state government in Kerala is deeply concerned at the sudden influx of its own, and has announced a £15m rehab package for returning workers. "We could end up with half-a-million coming back in the months to come," finance minister Thomas Isaac told India Today weekly.