#reverse migration

In the single biggest reverse migration in more than 50 years, workers from the Gulf have streamed back to the coastal state of Kerala in the past year, propelled by a pandemic that deflated dreams of overseas riches and changing family fortunes. While once they came home wealthy and revered, bearing gold, sunglasses, clothes and funds to buy homes, now they have returned sheepish and penniless. Among the Indian states, Kerala sends the most workers to the Gulf, accounting for about 2.5 million of six million Indian nationals there. The state received about 19 percent of $78.6bn transferred to India from overseas workers in 2018, the highest state tally in the country that is the world’s top recipient of remittances. But more than 1.1 million people have returned in the last 10 months, 70 percent having lost their jobs as domestic workers, builders, waiters, chefs and more, official data shows. This has wrecked workers and their families’ lives and destroyed businesses dependent on the India-Gulf migration. More than 90 percent of Indian migrant workers, most of whom are low and semi-skilled workers, work in the Gulf region and southeast Asia, according to the United Nations.

To save lives, we allowed Covid-19 to hit our livelihoods. Entire economies ground to halt. It became zero balance in everyone’s account—state, industry, individual. But that would finally imperil everyone even more—fiscal health is related to physical health long-term—so it’s clear that economic activity needs to be kick-started. But by the time that hour struck, the migrant caravans had already clocked miles and miles on foot. Labour, numbering some 3.75 lakh, across states, were walking, or waiting to get on trains and buses.

बागेश्वर के चंद्रशेखर पांडे ने मुंबई से गांव लौटकर शुरु की ऑरगेनिक फार्मिंग