Stagnating wages, rising costs of living, a growing trend of imposing restrictions on foreign workers and the declining fortunes of the Gulf itself have resulted in a decline in the number of emigrants from Kerala and a weakened remittance flow into the State.
A DECREASE in the number of emigrants from Kerala, especially to the Gulf countries, and a fall in remittances in the two years from 2014 are some of the key findings of the Kerala Migration Survey (KMS) 2016 that have caught much media attention in recent months.
The survey, undertaken by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, found that the number of emigrants had fallen by over 1.5 lakh, return emigrants by 2.14 lakh and remittances by Rs.7,853 crore (see tables).
Emigration from Kerala steadily increased after 1998, when the first migration survey, conducted in that year put the number of emigrants from the State at 14 lakh and annual remittances at over Rs.13,000 crore. The KMS 2016 found, for the first time, a decrease in the number of emigrants from 24 lakh in 2014 to 22.4 lakh in 2016 and a fall in remittances from Rs.71,142 crore in 2014 to Rs.63,289 crore in 2016. The number of return emigrants also came down from 12.5 lakh in 2014 to 10.3 lakh in 2016.
However, remittance flows had weakened all over the world during the two years. According to the World Bank, remittances to developing countries dropped by 2.4 per cent, to $429 billion, in 2016, after a decline of 1 per cent in 2015. India, the largest remittance-receiving country, had in fact recorded the maximum fall with a decrease of 8.9 per cent.
Is the dwindling of funds from abroad a temporary phenomenon? How seriously will it affect the “money order economy” of Kerala, which had 2.1million, or 86 per cent, of its emigrants working in the Gulf countries in 2014?
In the past decade, international migration patterns from India changed dramatically, with Kerala, which had been sending the largest proportion of workers abroad for a long time, being overtaken by comparatively poorer or more populous States such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.
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