Dreams die in the desert

Dreams die in the desert

SWATHI V.

Unlike the educated elite who go Westwards, attracted by better opportunities and a luxurious lifestyle, those who land up in West Asia as waged labourers have a much harder time: Practically no rights, hostile working environments and absolutely no support systems. Why is it that the violation of their basic rights doesn't figure at all in the national imagination?

Photo: AFP

Building a future, brick by little brick...

About the same time that India aired “absolute displeasure and concern” over the continuing attacks on Indian citizens in Australia, the body of an Indian national completed two-and-a-half years of waiting for last rites in a Bahrain hospital. Nalli Mariamma (Nalli Mary according to her passport), the deceased dalit woman, hailed from a small village Ramaraju Lanka in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. The fact that she was a dalit, a woman and wife of an agricultural labourer who owned not a sliver of land had much to do with her death — unnoticed, uncared for and unwept over.

Daughter Nagaveni can only recollect that Mariamma's departure to Bahrain, to work as a domestic help in an Arab household, preceded her death in 2007 by four years. She had no flashy dreams of emigration, citizenship and permanent employment. There were debts to be repaid, and a house to be constructed in her village. A commission of Rs. 50,000 to the agent who earned her a job in Bahrain compounded the debt.

“We had borrowed Rs. 40,000 for an earlier travel to Muscat. The employer there did not like her and sent her back after three months. Her wages for the duration were accounted for her ticket price. We were only left with more debt,” Nagaveni recollects.

Desperate measures

After reaching Bahrain, Mariamma feared rejection once again owing to the employer's displeasure over her absolute lack of communication skills in English. Unsettling visions of mounting debt pushed her to the wall and she was left with no other choice than escaping from the house and seeking employment elsewhere. Her passport was held up with the sponsoring employer, and overnight, she had become an illegal immigrant.

“There was no communication for seven months after she had escaped. We all considered her dead. But then to our relief, she called and even sent money to repay the debts. After three years of stay, she was told by someone that she would be sent back as her passport was held up by the first employer. She escaped again,” Nagaveni says.

She could not get employment for the next four months, and reportedly had tiffs with her room-mates due to financial difficulties. Apparently, they had asked her to vacate, and she was on the roads. According to correspondents from Manama, she lost her mind and was found lurking in ruins.

For some time, there were no calls to home, presumably due to Mariamma's demented and indigent status. Then all of a sudden, the family received a call from an ailing Mariamma from a Bahrain hospital, and 10 days later, news about her death.

“She wept inconsolably, but could not explain what her illness was. She just said she had stomach pain. We could not talk to the doctors due to language barrier. There was nobody to look after her.”

Airlifting the body would have needed a couple of lakhs, and so it was decided that Mariamma would not return even as a dead body. The country she did not dare to leave was to become her abode in death too. Last rites needed an affidavit from her husband according to the rule of the land, and hence the unending delay. The village did not have a fax machine, and Mariamma's husband Venkateswara Rao would rarely be available when the MRO found the time to visit the village.

Hardly a ripple

Mariamma's death and the inhuman circumstances it occurred in remained largely unnoticed by the media, government, opposition and the vociferous groups shouting themselves hoarse for the rights of the non-resident Indians. As for Nagaveni and her father, they had too little time to be lost in wondering if the death was not worth outraging the nation's conscience. Coming to grips with the tragedy was a pressing necessity for them, because there lay a more worrisome aspect that needed attention — survival.

The hideous reality of the Indian poor consigning members of their nearest kin to an obscure fate in an alien land does not stop with Mariamma. While better mobility, cross-cultural experience, improvement in educational and employment opportunities and hopes of luxurious life act as inducements for the elite and educated classes migrating abroad, those who land up in West Asia as waged labourers do so for as little returns as construction of a house, payment of dowry, or acquiring a bit of land. In many cases — decidedly more in number than the Australian “racist” attacks — these little dreams come crashing down due to the hostile working environment and lack of support systems.

One more instance is the mysterious death of T. Nara Goud from Timmakpally village of Nizamabad district in Andhra Pradesh within a week after his arrival in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia in June 2009. He was found dead in the desert, and initially it was surmised to be a case of suicide and, later, of a heart attack. However, upon doubts, the police ordered a second autopsy and it validated horrendous conjectures. The forensic committee of Dammam noticed, apart from a diseased heart, abrasions on Mr. Goud's hands and shoulder, of the kind formed after remaining in shackles for a prolonged duration. It also noted that remaining fettered for a long period under extremely hot sun and the resultant physical exertion and nervous strain might have failed the already-fragile heart. Forensic examinations took extremely long, and the body could be sent home only after a whole year!

Mr. Goud had been an auto-rickshaw driver before he left for Saudi Arabia. He sold his vehicle and paid Rs.80,000 to the local agent who promised job as a car driver with handsome payment.

“He was asked to be a camel-herd instead of a driver upon reaching there. He refused, and the next we hear of him is that he is dead,” relates his nephew N. Satyanarayana Goud.

The Rs.1.5 lakh Mr. Goud borrowed for the fatal trip, an intimidating debt in rural India, could very possibly throw his wife and three kids onto the roads. His eldest son has already stopped his education and is going for NREG work.

Deafening silence

One is surprised that there was hardly any voice heard against the atrocity back at home. All the nationalistic flag-bearers of the NRI cause who jump at the slightest hint of perceived racism were blissfully ignorant of the incident or observed apathetic silence. No media trials, nor any surge of patriotism. A question raised in the state assembly by the local MLA was quickly buried under assurances of action. Nothing of the “action” is known however.

Another well-known sample of a nation's indifference towards its destitute citizens can be found in the case of Habib Hussain, a 26-year-old who came back from Saudi hidden in the toilet of an Air India flight. Initially, his appearance on the flight caused jitters among all those concerned with the nation's security — Islamophobia not ruled out. However, it was learnt later and thankfully believed — not before interrogations by Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the IB, state intelligence department, Rajasthan ATS and local police — that his illegal boarding had more to do with his desperation to fly back home, and nothing with the intention to harm the security of the nation. The company in which he was employed treated him shabbily, and seized his passport. He was asked to work as a cattle-herd after his due working hours, and not paid decently, hence the flight. While a large section of media was content with reporting about the investigations and court proceedings, a few among them, for a change, came out with details about conditions of poverty that had driven Mr. Hussain to Saudi Arabia. Not very surprisingly, in all accounts, the outrage characteristic of national media when its tender-to-touch racial sensibilities are injured was replaced by a flaccid lament about how people are flocking to Saudi despite such incidents. The media is not alone in holding such a patronising view of the migration experience of millions. Politicians do so too.

Escape from hell:Ayesha Sultana.

Mohd. Ali Shabbir, the former Minister of Minority Affairs in Andhra Pradesh and a key player in having a Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs set up, for one, takes satisfaction in the fact that the number of people rushing to Gulf countries has come down recently. He ascribes this fall in figures to the realisation by people of the inhuman conditions that would await them once they reach there.

Ayesha Sultana, a Hyderabadi woman who returned from Saudi Arabia, too swears by him. Ayesha, who went to Riyadh as a house maid, remained unpaid for months, despite being deployed to various places in the country by the local agent who sponsored her. Her passport was confiscated by the agent and never returned. Finally, she escaped from her workplace in Mecca, reached the Indian Consulate at Jeddah and waited there for months on end till the embassy reacted to her pleas and made arrangements for her return to Hyderabad.

“There are many like me languishing on the roads for over 15 years, waiting to return. You would find the underside of the Sitteen Flyover in Jeddah brimming with people eager to be picked by the police and deported. They even bribe the police and touts to get arrested,” says Ms. Ayesha. She vows never to go there again, and tells her compatriots to choose a penniless life here rather than chasing mirages abroad. Sad that they don't have a third choice though!

Ayesha's joy of safe return does not last though. Six months later, her daughter, five-year-old Rubina, for whose sake she had to cross the seas, still awaits a heart surgery, with no help arriving from any quarter.

One more such victim was Mohd. Mateen of Karimnagar, who escaped from his torturing employer and worked as a daily wage labourer before ending up in a hospital at Jeddah with a kidney ailment. His responsibility of getting three sisters married remained unfulfilled, as he and his father died within a gap of 12 days. Now his mother and sisters are as helpless as ever.

Losing battle

Be it Keta Tatarao, a dalit from East Godavari who escaped from bonded labour, and after being stepped on by a camel while fleeing, died of the injury on his flight back; or Dandugula Bheemaiah from Siricilla, Karimnagar, who went into a shock after being duped of Rs.16 lakh by an agent who promised a job for his son; or R. Lakshman from Nalgonda who lost his memory while working in Oman, but had nothing on him as identity-proof; or M. Kankaiah from Medak, who returned as a patient after continuous work in a hazardous carpet manufacturing utility, his ambition of having a house of his own remaining unfulfilled; each represents a case of desperate struggle against poverty, fought valiantly but lost miserably.

Political and legal interventions so far have been mostly aimed at keeping a check on the agents, rather than rendering the overseas experience a rewarding one for the emigrants. While a lot is being done in terms of preparatory courses to better equip job seekers and students aiming for higher educational and employment opportunities abroad, there is no such job-centric training for potential Gulf emigrants. Fast track courses in English language and in trades such as house-keeping, plumbing, electrical works, and construction work offered through institutes such as National Academy of Construction would have done a whale of good by placing the candidates a cut above others in terms of opportunities in West Asia. With no such intervention, Indian waged labourers end up competing with equally destitute, but more skilled workers from other Asian countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines.

The new Emigration Act on the anvil is said to prescribe more stringent procedure for registration of agents, and replace the existing agent network with a more centralised one. Such measures, by eliminating agents at the rural level, can only help in cutting down the number of people aiming to go to the Gulf countries, without addressing the real concerns in a comprehensive way.

PHOTO: AFP

Thankless job...

As can be gathered from history and contemporary experience, denying mobility to the rural population could only have an adverse effect, not only at the individual level, but on the community. It amounts to rejection of an opportunity for them to shed the beliefs, myths and dogmas associated with centuries of existence in stagnant village culture. As admitted by Mr. Shabbir himself, exposure to a foreign culture that is spiritually egalitarian has indeed resulted in estrangement of caste hierarchies among majority of the emigrants. “A Reddy and a Dalit, both do the same work there. They live together, cook and eat together, unlike in their native villages,” he said.

More important will be the MoUs to be entered about labour issues with the foreign governments. Cruel treatment and seizure of passports by employers should be taken up as an important issue to be dealt with during the discussions, because it is not in Indian government's capacity to bring the erring employers to book. Embassies, so far only mute spectators of inhuman treatment meted out to the Indian poor, should be empowered through the MoUs to set up help desks at various locations and coordinate with the departments concerned in the respective foreign governments in resolving the issues pertaining to harassment and deportations.

However, for the act to be successful in its mandate and for all these institutions and authorities to function and deliver, the paramount prerequisite is to have a civil society that gets equally enraged of social and class prejudices as it does about racial discrimination.

* * *

Changes in policy

Till last year, the focus was on making the condition of Gulf workers better. Accounting for 19 per cent of tabulated Non-resident and Overseas Indians, Gulf Indians have occupied a unique place in the consciousness of Indian policy makers. Largely deprived of citizenship even after spending decades in the Gulf, they face severe problems in meeting costs relating to death and illness. But these are the lucky ones. Many mortgage their life savings, fields and houses, only to be duped with a dud or faulty visa. The fortunate ones are stopped by the immigration authorities at the country's airports. Others have to spend months in Gulf jails awaiting deportation, a stamp that put a permanent stop to their dreams of going overseas to escape the poverty at home.

However, among the Gulf Indians, the lot of not all is pitiable. Many have struck it rich and are now feted citizens in their provinces. Several are now helping install sophisticated infrastructure from IT services to airport traffic control services. At the same time, the Gulf dream for potential emigrants is now coming to a close and new opportunities are going to open up elsewhere such as Japan and South East Asia. It is in keeping with all these factors that the Government made changes in the nearly two-decade-old Emigration Act.

One of the major changes is to ensure that the recruiting agent is solvent — by increasing the bank guarantee and application fee for registration besides asking for balance sheets. And literate, by making it compulsory for the agent to have a bachelor's degree or diploma. The service charges to be collected by the recruiting agent have now been fixed. For directly recruiting workers, foreign employers will have to now provide bank guarantee. In conjunction with bilateral agreements being struck with individual countries, it is hoped Indian expatriate workers will largely be able to escape exploitation and pitiable conditions they have been subjected to not only in the Gulf but also in emerging areas for employment for the Indian blue collar workforce.

SANDEEP DIKSHIT