Boom To Doom

The Gulf is no longer an El Dorado for the average Malayali. What does their return mean for the state and society?

- Jeemon Jacob

It’s early in the morning, but the Kozhikode international airport in Malabar in north Kerala is bustling. Purdahclad women, along with male relatives, throng the arrival gates as the PA system announces the arrival of a flight from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Strangely, the cheers of seeing a relative home on leave from “the Gulf”, is missing. Indeed, this is no happy occasion for many. Many of those trundling out through the arrival gates are making their last exit. They will not be returning.

Even the taxi drivers don’t chase them for trips any more, knowing that many will not want to splurge on the fare. As the arrivals hurry off, taxi driver Mohammed Hakeem says, “That despondent look says it all. Nobody wants to talk about their new ‘jobless’ status. We have been seeing them come in large numbers in the past few months. Many of them use public transport to go home. They don’t want anyone to see them...”

The returnees join a burgeoning band of Gulf returnees in the state, left with no job and little to talk of in savings after years—in some cases decades—of slaving in the desert lands. Of late, you only have to look at the passenger lists of the cheap flights to see the ‘reverse migration’ trend. The Muslim dominated Malappuram district in north Kerala, which accounts for one-fifth of the emigrant population in the state, is the worst hit.

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