Quality of Life: The new Bermuda Triangle

By John Cheeran
Why do Indians and other Asians go to the MiddleEast, though dehumanizing conditions await them there?
Well, there are a variety of reasons. Of course, those who are going to the Middle East, whether as manual labourers or still slightly better white-collar workers, are making a career choice. But the problem is that how informed that choice is.
When someone decides to move to the Middle East he is making that choice based on a vision of El Dorado. But that vision, unfortunately, is a hazy one.
You buy into the Dubai or Middle East dream on the assumption that you will have a quality life than what you already have in India. A prospective Gulfwallah has seen those who are coming back to India after a stint in the Middle East flaunting sun glasses, gold jewelry, swanky mobilephones and other assorted consumer goods. All that in return for a life!
The guys and gals who are coming back from the Middle East do have the scent of rich, not the stink of the labour camps.
Even if a prospective Gulfwallah cornered them and asked how good is the scene out there, he will not be given the real picture. That will be an admission of a dirty secret. And you watch in wonder the way these Middle East slaves splurge at home. And you are convinced that you too can have a short cut to success in the Gulf. But the splurge on the part of the Gulfwallah is a way of telling his neighbourhood that his immigrant dream has not turned into a nightmare. The agonies in the desert, the woes of a 10-men-in-a-room accommodation and other indignities at work are pushed aside for a month when they are onvacation.
And lest you forget, the majority of the blue collar workers will be returning home once in three or five years. Meanwhile they haven't seen their family, wives and children. ( I would write about the emotional toll, the Gulf Syndrome, at another time)
Who, then, can blame them for splurging at home, the only time they can breathe again as free spirits and rioting, when the heat gets too hot at labour camps?
The exodus from India to the Middle East boils down to the fact that none has dared to call the Gulf Bluff.
No recruiter will tell you how bad the working conditions are out there in the Middle East. And once you land there it is not at all easy to come back which is true even for professional such as doctors, engineers, journalists, accountants and nurses.
And can you believe that in Middle East countries the employer keeps your passport which is your vital personal document, though the federal law in places such the UAE tells them not to do so?
You may ask what's the big deal in employer keeping your passport. It's a big deal indeed. Your mobility is restricted, and you can leave the country only at the fancy of your employer. It is a handcuff by all means and gross violation of human rights. It is a way of telling you can't protest about anything out there.
But I was surprised to learn that many of the white collar professionals, when they made their decision to go to the Middle East, did not know of this dirty practice by the employers. Empolyers and recruiters do not mention this during the negotiations because it is against the law in their own country and against the human rights prevalent elsewhere in the world.
Then there is the pittance which majority of the immigrant workers get. As I had wrote in Quality of Life, even this pittance (Dh 400 or Indian Rs 4800) gets withheld for months. The working conditions are oppressive especially in the construction sector. And have you calculated the cost of maintaining a robot as a bricklayer or crane operator?
Asians are much, much cheaper than robots and easily programmed towork, with fear acting as the button to cow them down.
In India they were poor, but there were free.
In the Middle east they are still poor, but not free.
In India they had their huts, they had their women, they had their hooch.
He had a slice of life.
You would ask why can't they come back quickly if they don't like it hot there?
There are practical problems. First, his employer would not give him passport so he can't leave the country. And consider this reality. An average immigrant would have sold whatever piece of land he had, would have pawned or sold his wife's jewelry and borrowed from local loan shark to raise roughly Rs 150,000 for a visa from the agent. Add to this the cost of a flight ticket.
An immediate return to home without paying his lenders is ruled out; so he carries on, cursing his ill-informed choice. By the time he realises that The Land of Gold was just a mirage, it is too late. This is the reality for majority of the immigrants.
Many of them never come back to India; they overstay their visas; they lose their jobs, they have no money to buy a ticket to come home, and some of them can't afford to come back penniless.
The humiliation that awaits them in India is too hard to take on. They disappear from our radar. I have heard countless stories about Indians go missing in the Middle East never to be seen, never to be heard again.
In fact, I'm told, down south, CPI (M)'s own television channel runs a weekly programme focusing only on the missing people in the Middle East.
Aren't these people humans? Wouldn't you care if your poodle went missing from your own backyard?
Is the Middle East the new Bermuda Triangle?
Why don't we cry over these men and women rather than protesting over the abused rights of those who are in Guantanamo Bay?