Jagtial & Hyderabad (Telangana): “I learnt how to make it on YouTube'', said Monica Motapally, a reserved 20-year-old BSc student, as she broke into a smile when asked about the dreamcatcher hanging from one of the rafters at her sagging house in Arapet village, 30 km west of Jagtial town in northern Telangana. 

The elder of two siblings, she hoped to become a teacher after completing her higher studies. Like many in her village, her father, Gangadhar Motapally, migrated to the Gulf for work as a truck driver in 2018. Having worked for four years in Oman, he was due to return in August 2022. 

Three weeks before he was to come home, the 45-year-old felt severe discomfort and was hospitalised in the city of Ibra, two hours from Muscat. His medical records show he had hypertension and died of intracerebral haemorrhage four days later on 7 August 2022. 

Gangadhar’s body arrived at Hyderabad’s Shamshabad airport a week later, along with gifts Gangadhar had bought for family members and his savings  of Rs 120,000.

What led to Gangadhar’s brain haemorrhage is unknown. Declared medically fit for work when he was recruited, his family members say Gangadhar did not have hypertension when he left India. They say he developed anxiety while in Oman, which is why they insisted he return.

Gangadhar’s case is not unique. Thousands of Indian workers in the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states die every year leaving more questions than answers. The six states are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman.

A 2022 study conducted by the Vital-Signs partnership, a coalition of non-profit organisations from five origin states and FairSquare, a UK-based non-profit, revealed that approximately 10,000 migrant workers from south and southeast Asian die every year in the Gulf, with more than half of those deaths effectively unexplained. 

This means thousands of families remain without answers about why they lost a loved one.

The Exodus 

Gangadhar is survived by his wife Laxmi, daughter Monica and son Harshit. While Monica has secured a scholarship, Harshit is learning the electrical and plumbing trade at a private institute which costs the family Rs 40,000 over two years. 

The money Gangadhar sent back while working in Oman helped secure his family’s basic needs of food, education and healthcare. But it wasn't enough to pay off the family loans, which included Rs 200,000 Gangadhar borrowed through a local money lender, at 2% monthly interest, to pay an agent to secure a work visa. 

With pending loan payments, Laxmi struggles to make ends meet, working as a home-based worker rolling beedis and as a farm labourer from time to time. The family does not have any cultivable land, and after their own house collapsed a few monsoons ago, they moved to small rented accommodation in the same village.

Labour migration to the Gulf from Telangana started at scale from the late 1980s, according to Divya Balan, assistant professor in international studies at Pune’s  Flame University, who has studied the phenomenon. Today there are about 1.5 million Telugu workers in the Gulf.

Recurrent droughts and a distressed agricultural economy prompted workers to migrate from northern Telangana, which has come to be known as the Gulf Corridor in the state. 

In recent years, the lack of remunerative job opportunities at home has been a major factor behind people seeking employment in the Gulf, even for risky and poor-quality jobs. That push for jobs abroad is likely to rise  as the jobs crisis worsens in India, reflected most recently in the unemployment rate touching 9.2% in June, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a think tank. 

The problem is worse for young jobseekers who made up over 14 million or 82.9% of the total unemployed population in India in 2022 according to the India Employment Report 2024.

The Rush For Low-Income Jobs 

The primary source of data on Indians migrating to the Gulf, annual reports on emigration clearances issued by the ministry of external affairs, make a few things clear.

The Indian migrant population in the Gulf has expanded 11-fold over the last four decades, from 800,000 in 1983 to 3.3 million by 2001 to 8.8 million in 2022, the latest available data.

This exponential increase has been driven primarily by blue-collar migrants. Between 2008 and 2016 over 6.3 million emigration clearances were given, the overwhelming majority of which were for the six Gulf countries, according to government data. 

Emigration clearance is a proxy for low-income migrant workers.  While the number of clearances plummeted during the Covid years of 2020 and 2021, the last two years show a restoration to pre-pandemic levels with 329,699 and 398,321 clearances granted in 2022 and 2023 respectively. 

The Gulf continues to be the premier destination for overseas work for blue-collar migrants from India, accounting for more than two-thirds of overseas Indians. With Saudi Arabia expected to host the 2034 football world cup, demands for more labour may rise further.

The Demand For Compensation

Activists working with Gulf migrants have long been demanding an ex-gratia amount of Rs 10 lakh for the families of workers who die in the Gulf. 

Ex-gratia payments are meant to cover damages not covered under any existing  policy. The demand for an ex-gratia for Gulf migrants is one that seeks recognition for these workers’ lives and contributions and material support for their families. 

The Indian government, for instance, pays ex gratia to family members of any central government employee who dies during their period of service.

The only existing insurance scheme, Pravasi Bhartiya Bima Yojana (PBBY) or Emigrant Indian Insurance Scheme, is ineffective as most worker deaths are misleadingly attributed to natural causes in the destination countries, said activists. 

This is a widespread phenomenon in the Gulf. Several investigations, including this one in 2021 by migrant-rights.org, a leading advocacy based in the GCC. The study focussed on unexplained deaths of Nepali workers in Qatar. 

“When deaths are attributed to ‘natural causes’ or otherwise deemed unrelated to work, employers in Qatar are not obliged to pay compensation,” Barun Ghimire, a human rights lawyer from Nepal. “Nor are they obliged to conduct post-mortems in the case of ‘natural deaths,’ unless the death is related to crime.” 

Unless the death under question can be shown to be work related or occurring due to an accident, benefits under the PBBY do not materialise. Swadesh Parkipandla is the President of Pravasi Mitra Labour Union, which works with Gulf migrants and their families in Telangana. 

Parkipandla said the government should provide ex-gratia for all families who lost members working in the Gulf since the formation of the state in 2014. He estimated that close to 2,000 workers from Telangana have perished in the Gulf over the course of the last decade.  

At a recent meeting, chaired by Telangana’s backward classes welfare and transport minister Ponnam Prabhakar, the government announced Rs 500,000 as ex-gratia for workers who died after 7 December 2023 and Rs 100,000 for those who died before that date.

For the moment, Laxmi can only hope that Gangadhar’s case will be considered for the ex-Gratia scheme.

Deaths of migrant workers in the Gulf is perhaps the most weighty issue faced by workers’ families. There are two other systemic concerns: work-related injuries and extortionate recruitment fees. 

Millions, Voiceless

The economies of the GCC countries depend heavily on foreign workers, specifically Indian workers. The labour market in these countries is in large part shaped by the kafala (sponsorship) system, under which workers have little to no recourse to redressal mechanisms for the frequent abuses.

Employers (or kafeels) in these countries exercise disproportionate power (here and here) over workers’ lives through their control over their employment and immigration status, including residence, movement and change of jobs. 

The enduring kafala systems in the GCC ensure that despite the dependence of Gulf economies and societies on these workers, they live and work with severely limited rights. 

These workers are also crucial for the origin states, as they remit most of their earnings back home. Often from families with little or no land, the remittances from these workers are an extraordinarily important source of sustenance for households and indirectly sustain local economies. 

These workers also contribute to India’s foreign currency reserves, providing the government with a much needed cushion in managing the economy. India is the top remittance receiving country in the world, with the World Migration Report putting the figure at $111 billion ( Rs 9.1 lakh crore) for 2022. 

Baring Bahrain, the other five GCC countries feature in the top 10 sources of inward remittance for India. Yet, these workers do not find a voice in the Indian political or policy sphere and are barely represented in India’s labour movement either.

There are two reasons for this. First, a large number of problems faced by these workers are in a foreign land where the Indian state lacks jurisdiction . For all intents and purposes, labour organising by migrant workers is prohibited across the GCC, so large, recognised unions find it difficult to intervene. 

Second, since these workers are not present in India, and do not vote here, they have as yet not become a ‘vote bank’. Thus, traditional political parties and party linked unions have less incentive to take up their concerns seriously.

Left wing unions are an exception. In interviews with me, national functionaries of All India Trade Union Congress and All India Central Council of Trade Unions displayed a nuanced understanding of the issue, but they, too, have not made the demands of these workers into a national issue.

Life Altering Injuries & No Protection

Srinivas Chandhanagiri, 45, is a carpenter from Vempalli village in Telangana’s Karimnagar district. He worked in Oman between 2001 and 2006, and later went to Qatar from 2015 to 2019. 

Since he was a skilled worker, he was selected for a third stint in the Gulf last year, this time in the United Arab Emirates. He arrived in Dubai in February 2023, living in workers’ accommodation provided by the company. 

He said he struggled to acclimatise to the high heat upon arrival in the country and within days his health deteriorated. 

The Gulf faces substantially more heat stress than India. 

The third Vital Signs report (Killer Heat: Extreme Temperatures and Migrant Workers), collating climate data for all GCC states, found that “in most parts of the Gulf, there were between 100 and 150 days when the maximum daily temperature exceeds 40ºC. For the same period, the annual average in New Delhi is 24 days. 

“Extreme temperatures are not rare “heatwave” events in the Gulf, but evident for three to five months of every year, said the report. 

2 Amputated Fingers, Then Penury

For three days, Srinivas was severely unwell, unable to eat, and suffered regular bouts of vomiting. “By the third day I was even vomiting out the water I drank,” he said. 

At 11 pm in the evening of his third day of illness, he collapsed in a toilet. He was found by fellow workers in the morning when they broke open the toilet door. 

An Indian doctor who independently reviewed his medical records told me that based on the limited information, it was difficult to attribute a primary cause for Srinivas’ illness, but heat and the possible lack of sanitation at the workers’ camp contributed to the rapid worsening of his condition. 

Srinivas was admitted to Astor hospital in Dubai, where he remained in a coma for 14 days. He attributed his survival to a network of activists from Telangana and in the UAE who helped to cover his medical costs. 

A 2022  survey of  over 1,100 workers by Vital Signs found that healthcare services were “generally not tailored to the specific needs of migrant workers”. 

Discrimination and affordability were highlighted as major obstacles to healthcare access and “the gradual shift in the region to mandatory private health insurance is more likely to further restrict access to care than to improve low-paid migrant workers’ access to healthcare”.

When Srinivas returned to India, it cost him Rs 200,000 to have two fingers amputated at the Nizam Medical College in Hyderabad, after dry gangrene set in in his right index finger, while he was at the hospital in Dubai.  

The carpenter who earned up to Rs 40,000 every month now rolls beedis at his home. Together with his wife’s earnings, the household income has plummeted to less than Rs 5,000 per month, with the family relying on loans to make ends meet. 

Unable to work as before, Srinivas went to meet the district collector in the hope that the government might be able to help him set up a small shop or secure any other means of earning a living. The government could not help him. 

Srinivas said he held the Indian government responsible for not providing either social security or reintegration and rehabilitation measures to its workers in the Gulf. 

“Now I can’t do anything here,” he said.

An Unregulated Recruitment Industry

There are six state owned recruitment companies for overseas jobs in India, including Telangana’s TOMCOM (Telangana Overseas Manpower Company). Owing to a lack of resources and state initiative they cover a very small percentage (as low as 5%) of the recruitment market leaving the door open to unscrupulous agents. 

As of 4 Jan 2024, there were 1,988 registered recruiting agents in India, licensed by the Protectorate of Emigrants under the ministry of external affairs. 

Concentrated in major cities like Delhi and Mumbai, which have 286 and 588 recruiting agents respectively (compared to 100 for all of Telangana), these companies rely on a vast network of unlicensed sub-agents to find workers. 

These sub-agents work on commissions and thus often misinform workers to get them to apply. This is common knowledge among those who work in or study the industry, and is acknowledged by the ministry of external affairs as well. 

Workers rely on this base layer of sub-agents for access to job opportunities overseas, thus creating an asymmetric situation where their desperation for remunerative jobs sees them pay large sums of money in the hope of securing one without adequate information or surety. 

The result is that workers sink into debt even before a job offer materialises.

Overcharging & Fraud

As per the International Labour Organisation’s general principles and operational guidelines for fair recruitment and The Private Employment Agencies Convention of 1997 (No 181) all recruitment related charges must be borne by the employer in the destination state. 

The reality in India is that workers routinely pay exorbitant amounts in the hope of securing work overseas, often getting duped by fraudulent agents in the process. 

A 2021 study called the Five Corridors Project, led by FairSquare found that  employers in destination states often stimulate the demand for unethical recruitment. 

“Businesses are happy to save on these [recruitment] costs,” said the study. “They may in some cases require that recruiters commit to not charging them, before commissioning them to recruit on their behalf. Origin state recruiters may even be asked to pay ‘kickbacks’ to employers or their representatives for the right to supply them with workers." 

These costs are passed down the line. Not only do these costs render workers indebted and, so, reduce their bargaining power in the labour market, they reduce the financial capacity of low-income households. 

In many cases, this expenditure does not even result in finding a job. Considering a conservative Rs 100,000-estimate of recruitment fees that workers pay, migrants from Telangana to the Gulf have effectively paid Rs 15,000 crore over the years to recruiters. 

ILO-World Bank surveys conducted in 2015 and 2016 found that Indian workers paid an average recruitment fee of $1,156 to secure a job in Qatar and $1,507 for a job in Saudi Arabia.  

The government bars recruitment agents from charging more than Rs 30,000 per worker. If workers from Telangana were recruited at the maximum prescribed government rate,  the recruitment cost should not have exceeded Rs 4,500 crore.

By these estimates, the overseas recruitment industry has generated an illicit surplus of approximately Rs 10,500 crore.

The Power Of Stories

In May 2024, I met a group of young men in Kistampet village, near Jagtial town, their lives shaped by their struggle to find employment in the Gulf, often inspired by the stories of others who successfully preceded them. 

A driver, 21-year-old Thogari Lavan is from a family that owns 2 acres of land, farming tadgolas (ice apples). Last year, he borrowed Rs 300,000 from a local moneylender, at a monthly interest rate of 2% to pay an agent in the neighbouring village for a job in the Gulf. 

When he reached the UAE along with 16 others from neighbouring villages, the jobs they had been promised did not exist. They returned home in 15 days, paying their own way. 

Ever since, Thogari and the others have been trying to recover the payment he made to the agent. The agent claims he will get them another opportunity to return to the Gulf. So, men like Thogari wait, even as interest accrues on the debt they undertook. 

Thogari’s friend, Naresh, a 23-year-old who uses only one name, said that he went  Abu Dhabi to work on a two-year contract, but the company that hired him shut down after just two months. He returned two months later without being paid.

“The company gave me a two-year contract,” said Naresh, who also hoped his agent would get him another job. “Shouldn’t they pay me at least for the two months I worked for them?” 

In Ravi Teja’s village, everyone spoke of being inspired to leave for the Mediterranean island of Cyprus ever since one person from the village got a job there as a delivery worker. Even though no one really knows the conditions of work the unnamed person making deliveries in Cyprus faces, his story has encouraged twenty one others to bet on an agent to get them a job in Cyprus.

A  25-year-old welder in his village of Kistampet, earning between Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 per month for the last 10 years, Teja paid a local agent Rs 150,000 two years ago for a job in Cyprus. He’s had no offer since, his experience symbolising the power of emigrant stories, each a sliver of hope of escaping increasingly desperate employment situations at home.

“If I could earn Rs 20,000 every month, I would not apply for these jobs abroad,” said Teja, who in 2022 borrowed another Rs 200,000 to apply for a welder’s job in Poland through a licenced agent in Visakhapatnam, hoping to earn Rs 50,000 per month if he got it. 

Anger At The Govt

There is evident anger and dismay at the government, which the young men I spoke to said had failed to provide remunerative, local jobs and failed to  protect workers who tried to find work overseas. 

Vijendra (29), who uses one name, returned home to Kistampet from Dubai in 2020 after working there for five years. While he found a job and saved from his time in Dubai, he identified with the grievances of others. 

The government, said Vijendra, could provide free legal aid in employment related disputes in destination countries and penalise unscrupulous agents at home.

“If our government were to back us, we would fight for our rights,” he said.

Velumala Bhumaya, 45, of Raikal village in Jagtial district, works with a pressure group called the Telangana Gulf Workers Joint Action Committee (T-JAC) after returning from Dubai after 10 years, first as a bike messenger for a postal service and then as a driver for a private hotel. 

Those migrating to the Gulf, he said, had simple aspirations.

“What does someone going from here hope to achieve?” said Bhumaya. “To build a house for their family. To get their children married. To ensure they can pay for education. No one goes with the idea of becoming a millionaire there. They go with modest dreams.”

Bhumaya’s feelings highlight the contrast between Indian blue-collar and white-collar migrants, who are fewer in number but receive significant government attention. 

 “If our government wants, it can do a lot of things,” said Guggila Ravi Goud, a Gulf returnee who spent the better part of the last decade working in Qatar and now leads T-JAC. 

“It (the government) can regulate agents here, and cancel their licences if they are found to be sending workers in a way that causes them harm,” said Goud. “It must provide insurance cover and legal aid, help in swift return in case of distress and help workers reintegrate into the local economy upon return.” 

Bhumaya explained how the unregulated recruitment industry and its incentive-based structure pits the interests of agents against those of workers, with no laws to hold them accountable.

“The sub-agents sell pipe dreams,” said Bhumaya. “They say we will charge you less and the job will pay more. But the truth is that they only work for a commission.” 

Govt Inaction & The Law

The government’s inaction is clear to T-JAC activists, who alleged that most local agents were known to the police. Some claimed agents even paid a commission to the police. 

According to Sister Lissy Joseph, leader of the National Workers Welfare Trust, a non-profit advocacy organisation working with migrant and domestic workers, the T-JAC has been raising the issue since Telangana was formed in 2014. 

“We were able to cajole the then TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samithi, now known as the Bharat Rashtra Samithi) government in the state to acknowledge the issue,” said Sister Joseph. “They held state-level meetings about it. Eventually, the main political parties in the state took notice and made it a campaign issue in both assembly elections since 2019.” 

That success has not yet translated to government policy, a leading reason being that the workers concerned do not cast their vote since they are in a foreign land.

It does not help that the law is inadequate.

The Emigration Act of 1983 lays out the administrative and bureaucratic framework governing the  recruitment of Indian workers overseas. The ministry of external affairs proposed to replace the Act in 2019 and 2021. 

The first attempt lapsed with the dissolution of the 16th Lok Sabha. The draft Bill was criticised by experts on Indo-Gulf migration, such as S Irudaya Rajan, who in 2019 argued that it needed to be inclusive and informed by a rights-based approach. 

The second attempt, the Emigration Bill 2021 improved on the 1983 law but did little to recognise the rights and contributions of India’s overseas workers, said activists. Instead of reflecting four decades of systematic abuse and exploitation overseas, the bill was more an administrative streamlining.

The 2021 Bill, Nikhil Eapen, a specialist migration researcher wrote in 2021, “lacks a human rights framework aimed at securing the rights of migrants and their families”. This Bill too fell by the wayside, and the 1983 Act continues to be in force.

The Kerala Model

“Our embassies [in the Gulf] need to be responsive, they need to have more people working there. They also need to have someone who can speak Telugu,” said Sanjeeva Reddy of Chintalpet village, who returned from Abu Dhabi  having worked there for 12 years, beginning as an office boy and rising to cleaning supervisor. 

“Modi visited the UAE seven times in the last five years. Seven times!” said Reddy. “He didn’t raise the issue of workers even once. He just inaugurated a temple there and sells false dreams here. He does not have our interests at heart.” There are over 3.5 million Indians working in the UAE.

Bhumya emphasised the importance of insurance, given the nature of work and heat in the Gulf. “Working there can reduce the number of years from a person’s life,” he said. “Insurance cover is a must.”

As we said, the union government insurance scheme, the Pravasi Bhartiya Bima Yojana, which provides a death and disability cover of Rs 10 lakh to Indian migrant workers in case of work-related disability or death, is of little use. 

No more than 38.75 claims were settled on average between 2019-20 and 2022-23, according to data submitted by the union government to Parliament in February 2024. Most of the 9 million Indians in the Gulf work in physically demanding jobs.

The ministry of external affairs also administers the Indian Community Welfare Fund, which provides resources for emergencies faced by Indians overseas after checking whether they are eligible for help or not.

At the state level, Kerala, which has a long history of migration and of progressive governments since independence, stands apart with policy measures to address the needs of emigrant workers hailing from the state. 

In addition to a number of services, the department of non-resident Keralite affairs administers accident and life insurance programmes, repatriation of bodies from foreign countries, medical and marriage assistance for returnee migrants and reintegration into the local economy upon return.

Beyond Kerala, few states have specific measures in place for emigrant workers. On 17 April 2024, however, the Congress government of chief minister Revanth Reddy in Telangana indicated it was considering a policy to address some of these challenges. 

The longstanding demand for a Gulf Workers Welfare Board found mention in the Telangana Congress party’s election campaign, especially in the north of the state, a result of a decade of advocacy by workers banded together under the T-JAC banner.

The Promise Of Change

In April 2024, chief minister Reddy met T-JAC activists and announced that his government would evolve a policy to address the welfare needs of Gulf Workers by September. 

In March, Reddy announced an ex-gratia of Rs 500,000 compensation to each of two Gulf workers’ families who died overseas. The Congress also tried to court Gulf workers in the Lok Sabha elections, particularly in the seats of Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Adilabad, by promising to create a Telangana Gulf Workers Welfare Board. 

These districts, with 15 assembly seats, regularly feature in an annual union government list of 100 districts that send the most workers overseas. 

Bheem Reddy, the president of the Emigrants Welfare Forum, a migrant rights advocacy group in Telangana and a part of the Telangana Joint Action Committee, is optimistic about the Telangana government's efforts to create a welfare net for Gulf migrants. 

“This government is the first in India to have provided ex-gratia payments in case of emigrant workers' deaths,” he said. “They don't do that even in Kerala." 

The Congress government's efforts have continued even after the elections. It has included Gulf migrant complaints and queries as part of its statewide grievance redressal programme called Telangana Prajavani. 

“They have created a grievance redressal mechanism for Gulf migrants since September,” said Reddy. “Gulf migrants can now submit their complaints at a dedicated counter twice every week at the Praja Bhavan."

If the link between advocacy and political action succeeds in Telangana, there could be national implications. The Hindi heartland states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar send between 4 to 5 million  workers to the Gulf. 

Rajasthan and West Bengal follow in the list of top emigrant states. Catering to the needs of these workers, said activists, could have substantial  implications for millions of workers and their families. 

While Telangana’s new government has inspired some hope among the Gulf migrants and returnees in the state, they are circumspect. 

Vijendra spoke for many when he said, “We have never seen any government take up this issue in our interest. It is good now that they are saying these things, but let’s see what they do.”

(Usman Jawed is a consultant researcher and migrant-worker-rights advocate working with FairSquare.)

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