The Gaping Gulf

By Shaju Philip
When the last crane dulled into a drone before finally creaking to a halt at a construction site in Dubai last December, Kudukkilpoyil Shoukkathu felt the stillness grow into a monstrous reality: he would have to leave Dubai and take the next flight to Kerala.
Shoukkathu had lost his job with a leading construction firm in Dubai, where he worked as a manual worker, earning Rs 10,000 a month. He had only recently paid back the last installment of the Rs 2 lakh loan he took three years ago to get a visa to the Gulf. “I feel lucky that I could at least clear my debts before returning home. Many of my friends are staying on illegally in Dubai, unable to face the money lenders back home. They are hoping the UAE doesn’t begin an other drive to flush out illegal immigrants. If that happens…,” trails off Shoukkathu, 30, who now works at a tea stall in Thamarassery, North Kerala.
Kerala’s Gulf dream—the kind that Gulf-bound workers stuff into huge cardboard boxes that are wheeled out of the state’s airports in Thiruvananthapu ram, Kochi and Kozhikode—has finally started to unravel. The Gulf, slowed down by a gloomy economy, seems to be shutting its doors on workers who arrive on its shores with nothing but grit.
According to state Finance Minister Thomas Issac, a calamity awaits the state. “Around 2 to 5 lakh expatriates are expected to return from the Gulf. Unfortunately, the Centre has totally neglected them in the stimulus package. But the state has taken a host of measures, including the formation of a welfare fund of Rs 10 crore and soft loans for the returnees,” he says. Special arrangements will be made to ensure that their children get admission in schools in the state, Issac said.
According to a rough estimate, about 25 lakh Keralites work in the Gulf. Though the economic meltdown in the Gulf, particularly in the UAE, has created panic among the people of Kerala, no data is available on the returnees. The government has assigned NORKA Roots (the Non-Resident Keralites Affairs Department set up by the state government) to take a head count of the returnees but the agency is yet to begin work, says its general manager S.M. Najeeb.
According to Air India manager H.A. Munaff, the volume of passengers to Kerala from the UAE, particularly from Dubai, has gone up by 15 to 20 per cent since last month compared to the corresponding period last year. Air India and the foreign carriers together conduct about 400 schedules a week from the state’s three airports to various Gulf points. “We are watching the situation, but can see no panic signal at this stage,” he says.
As per media reports, the slump in real estate markets in Dubai has led to severe job cuts. The most affected would be unskilled labourers, says Najeeb.
Like Athrappil Asain. The 42-year-old has no clear picture of what went wrong at the department store chain in Jeddah, where he worked as an office boy for 18 years. “I heard some crash in the stock market led to its downfall. Now the chain has closed all its outlets. The buildings have been given on lease to other ventures,” he says.
Even after the Rs 3,000 hike he got last year, Asain only earned Rs 18,000 a month despite having worked for 18 years. “My only asset is this concrete-roof house, which I built over seven years, with whatever was left of my deposits,” says Asain, from his home in Chelari in Malappuram district.
For the nearly two decades that he spent in Jeddah, Asain could meet his wife and children only once every three years. But these were mere quibbles, he says, when compared to what the job meant for him and his family. “Had I stayed on in Kerala, I would have never got a job. In Kerala, you find post-graduates working as office boys. I would have been forced to work as a manual labourer,” says the Class V dropout. His visa has been cancelled and he has been home for the last two months.
Dream turns sour Large-scale migration to the Gulf began in the early ’70s, when the oil riches triggered a boom in the Gulf States. For Keralites, the desert and its towering sky scrapers made home seem surreal—a distant rain washed land they hoped to go back to some day. But they were also aware that working in the financial mecca was the only way they could send money orders home. The Gulf proved a great leveller. For a population that fretted about unemployment, caste hierarchies and shrinking land, this was the perfect release.
So they all went—doctors, engineers, nurses, electricians, plumbers. Anyone who wanted a job turned to the Gulf, often borrowing and bribing to get there. By the ’80s, remittances from the Gulf were the mainstay of the state’s economy. Lakhs of families in the state lived on “Gulf money”.
As per the latest banking figures, banks in Kerala have non-resident Rupee deposits of Rs 32,000 crore, which forms 32 per cent of the total bank deposits in the state. Apart from this, unaccounted money to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore also reportedly flows into the state from the Gulf every year through the hawala route. A section of lower-income families is said to be dependant on hawala for their remittances.
Over the years, Gulf money changed the face of Kerala. Across cities and remote villages, thatched huts made way for shiny houses and restaurants put up “Sharjah Shakes” and shawarmahs on their menus. Panchayat towns in the state have Gulf bazaars that stock ‘foreign goods’. Muslim-dominated North Kerala towns have eateries that dish out Arabian delicacies. The boom created mini Gulf spots in the state such as Nadapuram, Koduvally, Chavakkad and Mongam.
Till a decade ago, the most eligible bachelors were the ones in the Gulf. The grooms usually flew back to the Gulf within a few days of their wedding and left be hind ‘Gulf wives’ to run the family.
The Kerala-Gulf corridor proved lucrative for Air India, which operates services from all the three airports in the state. In fact, Kozhikode airport was opened in 1984 in response to the demand from Gulf expatriates.
Three out of every four Keralite migrants to the Gulf hail from North Kerala.
The Gulf lost its sheen mainly after 2000, when job avenues mushroomed in India following the IT boom. Besides, difficult labour laws and the clamour for job quota for Gulf na tives also affected the outflow of Keralites. Earlier, the Gulf War of 1992 had created panic among the expatriate community and their dependants, triggering an exodus from Kuwait.
This time, the economic meltdown has precipitated a similar homecoming. When Erettumchalil Naufal, an office boy with a catering firm in Abu Dhabi, boarded a flight to Kozhikode last year, he was looking forward to the two months he would spend with his family in Kerala. As usual, the company had paid his salary and bought his air tickets. But when the 25-year-old returned from his vacation, he was told he could go back. “They simply told me the post doesn’t exist anymore since the company had seen an ‘unexpected fall in business’,” says the bachelor who supported a family of five with his salary of Rs 10,000 a month. But he hopes to go back to the Gulf. “The company has promised to call me back,” he says. Till then, he will have to work in a cool bar in his native town of Thamarassery.