Make youth employable in foreign land through skill upgrade

Visuals emerging from a gurdwara in Jalandhar’s Talhan village once used to offer a fascinating sight.

Those wanting to settle abroad had impeccable faith in the shrine and used to offer toy planes there, praying for wish fulfilment.

Though the practice has been discontinued by the gurdwara management now, its media coverage in the past painted Punjab as a rich and prosperous state.

Over the years, this migration also brought riches, with rural homes getting converted into mansions, with swanky cars parked in garages.

Anyone settled abroad was held in awe and even approached with marriage proposals.

Families of non-resident Indians also used to install concrete models of planes atop their rooftops, announcing their social uplift.

However, the flight that brought 104 Indians from the US and landed at the Amritsar airport on February 5 revealed the dark side of this migration story.

Most deportees had one thing common — their families had taken huge loans from moneylenders, that too on high interest rates, to send them abroad. This was done with the hope of improving their economic conditions stemming from unprofitable agriculture and lack of job opportunities. The youth too took the foreign settlement as a quick-fix solution to the problems.

Hoping for a bright future, many people undertake months-long arduous journeys, trekking difficult terrain and negotiating with security challenges, while cross multiple countries through the illegal “donkey” route — an illegal pathway used by emigrants to enter a foreign country.

Families of several US deportees have alleged that the travel agents charged them up to Rs 50 lakh to send their children abroad through legal ways but then ended up forcing them to undertake months-long journey to the US.

This mad rush had its social pitfalls too. Several villages like Dayalpura and Mandi Rampuriyan, located between Phillaur and Phagwara towns, have seen demographic changes, with sometimes entire families moving abroad.

The deportation was not the first such instance in recent years.

According to recent data from the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Statistics of the US, the country has deported over 15,000 Indians in the past 15 years.

The highest number of deportations took place in 2019, when 2,042 Indians were sent back. However, the earlier deportations did not attract controversy like current one.

This time, visuals of “handcuffed, chained Indians” bundled in a military plane by the US, which was directed to land in Amritsar instead of New Delhi or Gujarat, left a bitter taste and called for introspection by the government and society at large.

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had claimed in April 2022 that his party would stem the brain drain by improving the job situation.

In August last year, while handing over job letters to youth, he claimed that the “reverse migration had started with many youngsters returning home” to take up government jobs being provided by the AAP government.

However, the situation remains far from satisfactory.

Paramjit Judge, a noted sociologist, says “Not just adopting donkey routes, many entered into sham marriages where even brothers married sisters to get entry into a foreign country.”

He, however, says there is nothing wrong with migration and nobody can stop it.

“The British encouraged it when they took Punjabis abroad for developing agriculture in England and other colonies and also to lay railway tracks in Africa. Some years after the Independence, voluntary migration took place, though the last decade seems to have seen a sharp increase in it,” he says.

Dr Pramod Kumar, Director, Institute for Development and Communication (IDC) Chandigarh, too questions the suggestions to stop it.

“The issue is raised when rural people go abroad or get caught using illegal ways. No one asks well-to-do families living in Chandigarh why they have sent their children abroad,” he says.

“It is sad that the rural youth are always asked to preserve our heritage, while educated individuals, including government officers, settle their children abroad,” he adds.

Kumar said the real issue confronting the state is how to make the youth educated and skilled enough to get gainfully employed in a foreign land. He says the government should provide consultancy services in India and abroad to make the youth aware of the possible employment opportunities. “In fact, the government should sponsor this so that no youth falls into the hands of scamsters,” Kumar adds.