India Migrations Reader

S. Irudaya Rajan

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317195009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume brings together critical and landmark studies in Indian migration.

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• Covers a range of key themes — emigration policy in countries of destination and origin, development and remittances, gender issues, impact of the global financial crisis, conflict, and inclusive growth

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• Looks at new and emerging patterns in Indian migration

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• Includes essays by major scholars in the field

The book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, migration and diaspora studies, economics and sociology. It will also interest policymakers and government institutions working in the area.

1
Migration Policy Reforms in India

Some reflections

S. Krishna Kumar

Introduction

International migration from India has had a long history. Scholars note many distinct phases of international migration, including at least three in the twentieth century. The first immediately after independence was mostly to the UK. The second, since the mid-1970s to the Gulf, was triggered by the oil boom and has continued with ebbs and flows. The third to the USA in the 1990s was led by IT. Post-independence migration has not been driven or supported by any policy. Though the Emigration Act of 1922 was replaced by the Act of 1983 largely at the instance of the Supreme Court, no attempt was made to articulate a policy governing international migration.

With the creation of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) as an independent ministry in 2004 and the assignment to the MOIA of the work relating to international migration, formulation of a policy on international migration began to receive attention. The MOIA signed an agreement with the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) in 2006, under which a formal request was made in 2007 for a draft policy on international migration. CDS set up a Migration Policy Group that would draw upon not only the work of the migration unit but also the work done by other units of the CDS in the broad area of development so that issues cutting across disciplines could be addressed in the draft policy.

An approach to the policy was prepared and sent to the MOIA. This was finally discussed with the MOIA in January 2008. The MOIA’s comments have been factored in while finalizing the present draft of the policy.

The context

The context of international migration from India has changed significantly since the creation of the MOIA in May 2004. Certain features of this change deserve to be noted.

First, the trend rate of growth of the Indian economy went up significantly to 8.7 per cent per annum during 2004–2008, with an annual target of 9 per cent for the Eleventh Plan period of 2007–2012. Faster growth has led to tremendous shortage of labour, particularly skilled but also less skilled. This in turn has led to increased wages across sectors. It is therefore no longer necessary for our workers to go abroad to earn high wages and save something for the family. Internal migration to large metropolitan centres like Mumbai and Delhi or even regional growth poles like Bangalore or Hyderabad provides less risky options. Dr C. Rangarajan, the Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, predicts that India will reach full employment status by 2012.

While self or service sector employment accounts for most of the new jobs created, it is clear that severe lack of work opportunities at home no longer drives emigration even in Kerala. Young people in certain regions of other states may be in a similar socio-economic situation that Kerala was in when Gulf emigration started but with opportunities growing within India, they are likely to grow out of the emigration craze sooner.

Second, the high growth in Asia led by China, India, and the other tiger economies is in sharp contrast to the low growth of the OECD economies. There are now fears of a recession in the USA and the UK. So at all skill levels, economies like that of India are likely to provide more job opportunities in the years to come. There are instances of large India construction firms relocating labour from their sites in the Gulf countries to India.

Third, working conditions in many countries are becoming difficult, if not intolerable. Incidents in the Gulf and even the USA of workers protesting against delays in payment of wages and poor working conditions are on the increase.

Fourth, despite the rapid growth of the economy and of employment in India, the number of persons cleared for emigration has been increasing every year. There are also increasing instances of irregular migration and of stranded Indian workers rescued in different parts of the world. CDS studies show that many Indians working in the Gulf reached there on other than regular work visas, suggesting the wide spread collusion and abuse of the system.

Finally, apart from the malpractices of the recruitment industry, there is a broader failure of governance across the entire regime of passport, emigration, and visa systems. The number of fake passports, travel, and employment documents in circulation greatly erodes the very credibility of the system to such an extent that to the victims, overseas nations, and international agencies, the government appears to be part of the problem rather than of the solution.

On the positive side, because of migration within regions such as Europe, new opportunities of replacement migration are coming in the way of Indian workers. Countries like Poland, whose workers move within the EU, are now seeking formal agreements with India to access workers with particular skills to replenish their manpower. If these opportunities are properly harnessed, India will also be able to diversify the geographical destination of its overseas workforce away from the Gulf to Europe and even other regions.

Thus, any policy that is formulated needs to factor in the current context of international migration and respond to the emerging challenges as well as opportunities.

Outline of the policy

Clearly, the proposed policy has to be a policy on international migration and not merely a policy on emigration from India. The latter is far more restricted in terms of skill levels and geographical coverage. MOIA, as the nodal ministry, needs to articulate a broader policy on international migration because India, like most other countries of the world today, is simultaneously a country of origin, transit, and destination. As a large democracy and a leading economy of the world, India needs to develop an unambiguous position on international migration, cutting across ministries, that is then articulated in the policy.

Second, given the changed context in India and the world, the proposed policy has clearly to focus on temporary rather permanent migration. This implies that the policy would consciously acknowledge and take into account issues associated with return and reintegration.

Third, consistent with the shift away from emigration, the policy has to focus on facilitation and management rather than protection as narrowly defined hitherto under the Emigration Act, 1983. Even protection has to be given a broader content that includes insurance and other risk mitigation products that the international migrant can be educated to make informed choices about.

Fourth, the policy has to take cognizance of the fact that in the international migration chain, there are many links both within and outside India and while the policy should allow for the government to work with various stakeholders, it should not hesitate to prosecute violators of the law in appropriate forums. In this context, it may be particularly important to move away from the mindset of blaming the recruitment industry for all the ills of the system and concede the need for a new system that cannot be so easily abused by all and sundry. It is India’s international credibility that is at stake.

Finally, the new policy would require a different legal framework to enforce its objectives and ensure that the rights of the migrants are safeguarded.

An inclusive policy of international migration rather than emigration

India has operated hitherto in a policy vacuum in so far as international migration is concerned. The legislative framework of the Emigration Act focused on a narrow concept of protection delivered through the protectors and the protector General of Emigrants. The scheme of the Act permitted protection to be delivered by exception to only those with poor educational qualifications or to those going to destination countries with a relatively poor record of honouring workers’ rights. Over a period of time, this led to an ‘adverse selection’, with the less qualified workers, exploitative employers, and greedy middlemen getting together to defeat the objectives of the system. This vicious cycle needs to be replaced by a virtuous cycle where skill development is demonstrably well rewarded and workers seek legal channels and make informed choices about going overseas for work.

This approach of ‘protection by exception’ for some and ‘deemed protection’ for the others has also meant in practice that even among workers, there is no tracking of those at the higher end of the skill spectrum or of those going to all but a handful of countries. This greatly hampers attempts at gathering information about international migration and building up a database which could then be a building block for the database on overseas Indians or the Indian diaspora.

The way to outgrow the limitations of the colonial legislation on emigration is to recognize the multidimensional and multi-layered nature of international migration. Given this, the one dimensional approach of ‘protection by exception’ has to be replaced by a broader concept of facilitation and management that recognizes the need for the government to cater to the varying needs of those deciding to migrate for employment. This recognition should then lead to fundamental changes in how the entire system deals with itinerant workers right from the time they apply for passports to the time they board a plane to report to their employers.

In India, through administrative instructions rather than by legislation, a dual system of passports has been introduced since many years. All passports are classified, ab initio, into two categories: those in respect of which Emigration Clearance (is) Required (ECR) or those where Emigration Clearance (is) Not Required (ECNR). Conceived perhaps as a means to safeguard the emigrant worker by stamping the passport appropriately, this has hardly served the purpose. Passport is a constitutional right subject to eligibility and governed by a separate law. It should not depend on the outcome of the emigration process decided under a different law. The government must therefore move towards a system of a single class of passport for all citizens irrespective of their educational attributes or intended emigration destinations. This will be far going reform that will, over time, enable citizens to take responsibility for their own decisions on international migration.

A related weakness of the present system is that despite the ECR stamping or otherwise and despite data on emigration clearances, the government has no information on those who have actually migrated for work. The Embarkation Card filled by all departing passengers contains information that is not shared between the Bureau of Immigration and the Protector General of Emigrants. Attempts to share the data on emigration clearances and getting confirmation on actual departures have not been successful. This greatly compromises decision-making supported by hard facts and even the ability to respond to cases of distress or hardship.

Deregulating international migration

The process of reform of international migration that begins with passport reforms should be carried to its logical conclusion by bringing emigration clearance within its ambit. As already explained, emigration clearance is the exception, as people with ECNR passports and adequate educational attributes going to the most developed countries in the world do not require it. The question arises as to why emigration clearance cannot be done away with altogether.

This may run counter to conventional administrative wisdom that usually calls for greater controls when existing controls prove ineffective. However, a little reflection based on the empirical work done by CDS on Kerala and other scholars elsewhere shows that emigration clearance does not guarantee the workers anything and does not offer them even first aid, let alone protection, against exploitation at home and abroad. This arises out of the basic fact that protection and welfare of workers can only be guaranteed under local labour laws. In countries where the law discriminates between domestic and foreign workers or excludes certain categories of workers from the purview of labour legislation, emigration clearance in the country of origin merely adds to the costs and not to the benefits. The fact that despite the emigration clearance being in place, many travel for work on other visas or have the ECR suspended further underscores the purposelessness of the existing system.

The time has therefore come to admit that the existing system does not and will not work and look for feasible alternatives. The one alternative worth exploring is how the concern for the protection and welfare of the migrant worker can be secured through non-government entities, preferably in a competitive environment. This is the essence of the deregulation process that must become part of the proposed policy.

Such deregulation will have a number of components, including delicensing of recruitment, corporatization of the recruitment industry, scrapping the emigration clearance system, doing away with attestation of the employment contracts, certifying minimum wages, etc. In addition, the government could cause advisory services to be provided to workers on a voluntary basis. This is not a bad alternative at all as empirical work shows that a majority of less skilled workers go by the advice of families and friends when making emigration choices. The entire charade under the Emigration Act can therefore be replaced by a modern, technology-backed advisory service that is available at the option of the itinerant worker or his family. There will be no change in the legal status of the worker.

Apart from advisory services, the government can play a proactive role in getting insurance companies to offer a wider range of insurance products, including group insurance products that can be availed of by batches of workers such as painters, carpenters, drivers, etc.

Most importantly, the government can play a proactive role in signing bilateral agreements with destination countries that provide an umbrella under which temporary migration of workers and professionals can take place. Such agreements will not alter the nature of the laws of those countries, at least in the short run. However, they can provide a valuable platform for Indian missions abroad and even MOIA to pursue long-term reforms of the labour market in those countries. This will also receive the support of agencies like IOM, ILO, etc. who are working towards managing international mobility. Over a period of time, they will lead to better convergence of the objectives of the origin and destination countries.

A new legislative framework

As it is easier to prepare a fresh draft than redo a poor first draft, it would be better to go in for fresh legislation governing international migration rather than tinker with the present legislation that is still stuck in the emigration and protection mindset. While putting together such legislation will be a detailed drafting exercise, the elements of the new legislation can be spelt out and stated in the policy.

The proposed legislation can cover international migration in general and provide the basis for the government to manage it light-handedly. It can be a piece of modern legislation based on re-engineered systems and procedures and backed by IT. Second, it can bring all international migration into its fold so that the data is complete but without necessarily prescribing too many controls. Third, even data collection can be made easier by enabling large employers to provide information in bulk and by permitting on-line provision and updating of data. Fourth, it can bring in mitigation of risk associated with international migration as a public objective and work with entities that provide insurance products to achieve that objective. Finally, the legislation can provide the legal basis for measures that facilitate return and reintegration.

Summing up

The proposed policy should therefore be developed as an inclusive policy on international migration and should have deregulation as its overarching objective. It should be supported by a new legislative framework.

With regard to overseas work, the situation today is not dissimilar to the situation that prevailed in India in the 1980s when the equity markets were beginning to be patronized by small investors, many of whom were duped by the brokers and fly-by-night companies. Slowly, but steadily, the government developed a framework to deal with the entire sector and set up the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) through an administrative order, later giving it statutory basis.

As the independent regulator, the SEBI has been able to make India’s financial services industry one of the best regulated in the developing countries, capable of supporting a domestic investor base several magnitudes larger than what it was ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: the changing faces of Indian migration
• 1 Migration policy reforms in India: some reflections
• 2 Diaspora and development: critical issues
• 3 Migration and gender empowerment: emerging issues
• 4 Mobility of women workers from South Asia to the Gulf: stakeholders’ responses
• 5 The global economic crisis and governance of human mobility
• 6 Kerala emigration to Saudi Arabia: prospects under the Nitaqat law
• 7 Internal migration in India: are the underclass more mobile?
• 8 Politics of conflict and migration
• 9 Capitalist development and the informalization of labour markets in India
• 10 Inclusive growth and economic crises: labour migration and poverty in India
• Index