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Dispelling myths on migrants
Dynamics of Migration
in Kerala
Dr. K. C. Zachariah,
Dr. E. T. Mathew,
Dr. S. Irudaya Rajan
Orient Longman Pvt. Ltd.
Rs. 695.
WITH MOUNTING unemployment, stagnating industrial sector, collapsing farm front and a demeaning political leadership, Kerala has all the attributes of a banana state. Yet, it survives in a manner that has amazed even the sharpest of perceptible commentators. What makes the state tick despite its perceived failures on the economic front? The facile answer is its peripatetic population and the huge remittances it sends back.
Just a few statistics will vouch for this. Over Rs. 4,000 crores, by way of remittances, reach the State every year. NRI deposits account for nearly 45 per cent of the total bank deposits in the State. By the end of the nineties, the total workforce in the organised sector in the State was equal to the total workforce of Keralites in the Gulf alone. Few years hence it will even exceed. The windfall gains to the State as a result of the liberalisation of foreign exchange rate since 1991 varied from nearly Rs.525 crores in 1991-92 to Rs. 3,339 crores in 1999-20.
Yet, our radicals continue their verbal assault at everything the new economic policy suggests. For all the good the NRIs and their remittances do for the State, there is as yet no comprehensive study. There have been individual attempts to study some aspect, but a macro approach has eluded our academics.
The book under review fills this gap to a great extent. There is a fund of information, hither to unavailable, on NRIs, their social and educational background, the factors that compel them to migrate, their skills and earning capacities, their saving and spending habits and, more importantly, the impact of migration on such sensitive issues as marital relationships, family relationship, child and parental care, family structure and so on.
With Gulf absorbing much of the Malayali migrants, the study has naturally focused on them, though their counterparts in the U.S., Europe and other destinations have not been left out. The profile of the latter however differs from the former. For one, they are highly educated and skilled and have an assured and more gainful existence in the country of their adoption. For another, the emigrants to the West have a longer and deeper (read permanent) relationship with the countries they migrate to.
Has the State's economy benefited from the incessant flow of remittances that by any standard have been substantial? This question that has been in our minds for long remains largely unanswered. Ministers and officials do go to the Gulf ostensibly to woo investments from the NRIs. In the event, these efforts have been no more productive than the proverbial Jason's search for the Golden Fleece. That, however, has not disheartened our ministers and officials and they do make their pilgrimages at regular intervals though to no particular effect.
There are interesting nuggets of information in the book that go to disprove a few prevailing myths. One pertains to the gender ratio. A 1998 survey mentioned in the book shows that "the number of males per 1,000 females was only 953, a deficit of 47 males." However, if the emigrants are also included, the "deficit of 47males turns into an excess of 43 males."
A more interesting finding is that "Gulf wives were better educated than the general female population of the State; they were even better educated than their Gulf husbands." Ironically, for these women, neither low education nor higher age seems to bother when the partner is from the Gulf. But they have a different yardstick for their daughters. A whopping 83 per cent of Gulf wives reported that they would like their daughters to marry persons working in Kerala. Only 14 per cent preferred persons working abroad; a case of our women getting more sentimental than cerebral?
M.K.DAS
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