ASSEMBLY POLL '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS '98
ARCHIVES

More than half the Indians in the Gulf are Malayalees!

Kerala continues to top the list of Indian states contributing labour to foreign countries, supplying more than one-third of the overall figure.

Punjab comes second.

More than half the Indians working in the Gulf belong to this tiny South Indian state: 1.6 million of 3 million.

The latest statistics say the total number of Indians working abroad is 6,758,192. In the United States, India has a representation of 130,000. This leaves the major chunk in the Middle East.

Of the total, more than 2.5 million are from Kerala.

The latest figures with the department of non-resident Keralites has it that Saudi Arabia has the largest representation of Malayalees -- 800,000.

In the United Arab Emirates, 350,000 Keralites are working, while in Kuwait, the number is 125,000 as against the total Indian population of 650,000 and 250,000, respectively.

Bahrain has a population of 200,000 Indians, of whom 125,000 are from Kerala.

Oman and Qatar have 150,000 Indians each. Exactly half of them in each country is from Kerala.

The latest economic survey by the Kerala Planning Board says the growing unemployment in the state is the prime reason for such large-scale migration. The total number of job seekers in Kerala, as of October 31, 1998, stood at 3.75 million as against 3.32 million in 1990.

The fact that among the registered job seekers, 44,076 were post-graduates while 116,032 were professionally or technically qualified shows that the state has been unable to create job opportunities for all, forcing them to seek employment abroad.

Migration has been strong to other parts of the country too. According to a survey by the department of economics and statistics in 1980, 517,000 people migrated from the state. Of them, 201,000 migrated to foreign countries, the rest within the country.

UNI

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