Remitted with love: Punjab, Kerala & migrant money

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Appu P K worked hard as a worker abroad for 30 years to achieve his dreams: a big house, acres of land and the best education for his children.

True, he is away from his wife and children for most of the year but his family would never have had a comfortable life if he had not left his home in Chavakkad in Kerala. “I would have earned around Rs 200 monthly as a cook if had stayed back home but in the Gulf I earn more than Rs 23,000,” he says.

“When I left home in 1975, I didn’t have money or land. I first worked in Saudi Arabia and when I returned I bought land, constructed a house and put my children in school. I work as a cook in Muscat now,” says Appu.

At least 40 per cent of India’s international revenue is attributed to the remittances from Keralites. Around two million people from Kerala live abroad and another one million are temporary migrants, most of them construction labourers. The money this collective workforce sends back home is fast changing lives in Kerala.

“If you compare this 3 million to Kerala’s 32 million population, 10 per cent are directly exposed to international migration. It means one out of three Keralite is benefited by migrants,” says Dr S Irudaya Rajan, a scholar with the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvanathapuram.

Money coming in from the Gulf countries now forms almost a third of Kerala's income and almost all of it is spent in housing or in savings. The number of NRI accounts in the state has increased by almost 20 per cent in the last few years.

Banks say NRIs are their top customers. “More than 25 per cent of our deposits are by NRIs. Dubai, Sharjah and Bahrain are the main countries from we where we get deposits,” says V Syam Kumar, branch manager of Indian Bank in Thiruvananthapuram.

Building palatial houses is the second favourite investment among immigrant workers. A house is a sign of social mobility and now there are so many of them that entire neighbourhoods or ‘Gulf colonies’ dot across the state. Strangely, many of these houses are either locked up or have no male member living in it.