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NEW DELHI :
Jameel Basha, 36, has a dilemma: Should I go back to India or not? He has worked as an office assistant at a construction company in Saudi Arabia since 2017, earning the equivalent of ₹45,000 per month.
Her job prospects are now uncertain due to the turmoil caused by the double shock of the covid-19 pandemic and the fall in oil prices, the mainstay of the West Asian country’s income. “My employer has not paid us in the last three months. I am not sure if I will be fired,” Basha said by phone from Dammam.
Holding onto Dammam and sending money home to pay a ₹8 lakh personal loans, now is a challenge. “I came to work here only because wages are very low in India. If I go home, there is no guarantee that I will get a job, “he said.
Basha’s situation is similar to that of almost 10 million Indians, the vast majority of whom are unskilled or semi-skilled workers, in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. Workers like them sent more than $ 82 billion to India in 2019 as remittances to support families, a vital source of income for countries like India.
Oil demand has nearly dried up as nations closed borders and forced blockades, sending prices plummeting and striking a blow to the economies of West Asia, which depend to varying degrees on oil revenues. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Middle East and Central Asia region is projected to post growth of minus 2.8% in 2020.
India’s envoy to the United Arab Emirates until last September, Navdeep Suri, said “there is no doubt in my mind that the Indian business community and manual workers will be affected.”
India estimates that around 70% of the 10 million Indians in this region are manual workers, and the rest in white-collar jobs. Indian blue-collar workers, especially from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, are competing with Nepalese, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who work as mechanics, plumbers, janitors and drivers, as well as helping out in restaurants and small businesses.
Talmiz Ahmed, a former Indian ambassador to Oman and Saudi Arabia, expressed doubts about whether everyone who registered would actually return. “Some of those who have registered will be those who have terminated their contracts and want to go home,” he said. There may be some people who want to send their dependents back. And then there could be those who lost their jobs, Ahmed said.
Recalling the 2007-08 financial crisis, Ahmed said that only about 200,000 Indians out of an estimated 6 million finally returned from the region.
However, recognizing that the current crisis is different, Ahmed predicted a revival of the region’s economies in about a year. “This will not be the situation permanently,” he said.
Economist Indira Rajaraman noted that the return of several thousand Gulf migrants would have a major impact on India in socio-economic terms. “If there are 300,000-400,000 returnees, the government will have to record who those with symptoms that would need to be quarantined and keep in touch with others to see if they develop symptoms or not. They would have to track contacts on a much larger scale. It is a great burden on the states; especially for states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, “he said.
For 32-year-old taxi driver Ahmed Qasim in Kuwait, returning home is the only option, as the current crisis has meant being out of work for many days in April. “I am using the money that I was supposed to send my family home. Now I am concerned with how my family will meet their daily needs, “Qasim, a native of Tamil Nadu, said by phone from Kuwait.
According to Ahmed, a later part of the envelope calculation suggests that Indian immigrants to the Gulf of the five southern states keep approximately 40 million Indians in their home countries. But thanks to the pandemic and declining oil prices, remittances are expected to decline 23% in 2020 to $ 64 billion, the biggest drop in recent history, according to a World Bank report.
