EMIGRATION, probably Indian state of Kerala's top foreign exchange earner since the '70s, is now declining, a recent study has found.
The study was conducted by the Non-Resident Keralites' Affairs Department (NORKA), a public sector agency, set up by the state government to ensure the welfare of overseas Malayalees, and to redress their grievances and safeguard their rights.
According to the study, there had been a sharp fall in the number of Malayalees opting for employment in the Gulf since 1998.
The study attributes the decline to the "drastic changes in the immigration policies of the host countries, aimed at reducing the inflow of foreign workers, the recession in the Gulf economies and the saturation of the labour market of the unskilled and semi-skilled categories".
Though Kuwait was the chosen destination for Keralites earlier, it had changed after the invasion by Saddam Hussein, the study says. The UAE, which was the next most preferred place, started tightening norms since the mid-1990s because of fears that the expatriate influx was upsetting the country's demographic balance.
It stopped receiving applications for visas for unskilled workers in 1999, the study says.
There had been other measures like attempts to make recruitment of unskilled labour expensive and nationalisation of jobs - giving priority to the locals in the Gulf countries.
Also, there had been competition from other countries that supplied labourers at a cheaper price.
But, community sources point out that there have been other reasons for the drop in emigration from the south Indian state. For one, there were now more jobs at better salaries available within India, which was experiencing an economic boom.
Secondly, though the cost of living multiplied in the Gulf, as indeed it did in India, wages, mostly for the low-paid labourers, remained almost static in the Gulf. This made the Gulf jobs unattractive to Indians since the saving potential had become almost dipped, the sources point out.
If the current disconnect between incomes and expenses continued in the Gulf countries, there could soon be a reverse movement of people from the Gulf back to their home countries, observers said.