Virtue of necessity

The furore over North Korea exporting manpower brings home to me again how glibly Indians make a virtue of necessity. We publish erudite books exalting the role of migrants through history and write engaging newspaper articles about personal globalisation. Nowhere is there a whisper that when you come down to brass tacks, in one respect at least, the Indian professor at a hallowed Western university is no different from the Filipino maid who is exploited and abused in the Gulf. Both are economic refugees.

That’s why William Clark, a World Bank vice-president, advised a talented New Delhi economist who had applied for a job to wait until there was a vacancy for his particular specialisation. “I don’t want someone of your ability to become another professional Indian emigrant!” he said. Clark quit as media adviser to Anthony Eden over Britain’s invasion of Egypt in 1956, and joined the Observer newspaper, which is how I knew him. He told me that without his advice, the economist would have been regarded as one of hordes of generalists more anxious to get out of India than do anything special.
A word about the North Koreans before returning to the quite unnecessary Indian coyness about admitting that anything is done to earn more or improve one’s prospects. The Western media is castigating Pyongyang for sending thousands of workers all over Asia to earn foreign exchange for a near-bankrupt exchequer. A 2008 agreement with Mongolia, replacing an older deal, means that more than 5,000 North Koreans can work in the landlocked Central Asian state. Currently, around 3,000 of them toil on construction sites and in factories, some producing goods for popular British clothing brands.
New Delhi would be green with envy to learn their salaries go straight to North Korea’s embassy in Ulan Bator. Presumably, the embassy doles out some cash to the workers.
According to US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks, the North Koreans first approached a Canadian-owned gold mine with an offer of workers at $1.50 per day. Another cable says: “The working and living conditions of these labourers raise the concern that they are subject to coercion, and are not free to leave their employment... they are monitored closely by ‘minders’ from their government, and many are believed to be subject to government pressure because of family members left behind in North Korea.” Doesn’t sound too unfamiliar to those who have seen how Indian labourers fare in the Gulf.
North Korean workers are in even greater demand in Russia, where 21,000 laboured in the first quarter of 2010, mainly in logging camps in the country’s far east. Reportedly, they get just two days off in the year. Thousands more are believed to be employed in China, especially in towns like Dandong near the border, but no figures are available.
Given the CIA’s estimate of North Korea’s gross national product at only $40 billion in 2008, the more than $11 million that workers in Mongolia are believed to earn annually must be a great boon. Again, it’s no different from the close watch India keeps on expatriates’ remittances which jumped from under $21 billion in 2003 to last year’s $55 billion. Dr Alwyn Didar Singh, the overseas affairs secretary, proudly announced that “India received the highest remittance in 2010 compared with any other country in the world.” We need the money which probably comes more from labourers than NRI glitterati.
Another similarity. Dr Andrei Lankov, who teaches Korean studies at Seoul’s Kookmin University, says “it’s every North Korean worker’s dream” to be selected to work abroad. “They cannot make even remotely as much inside North Korea.” That would apply just as well not only to armies of Indian construction workers in Singapore, Malaysia and the Gulf but — heresy to say it! — the academics, executives and financial analysts in the US.
Finally, many North Korean workers go to extreme lengths to avoid going home. They live in perpetual fear of their minders forcing them do so. A man who broke his arm hid it from his superiors for over a month because he was afraid of being repatriated if they found out. But few manage to defect. Indians are luckier in that respect. Otherwise, 27 million desis wouldn’t have been scattered in 190 countries.
As already noted, their remittances have gone up dramatically. The World Bank confirms that China follows India — probably the only field where it takes second place — with $51 billion. Then come Mexico ($22.6 billion), the ($21.3 billion) and France ($15.9 billion). Given India’s need for investment funds, it might almost be worth emulating North Korea’s example of officially sponsored temporary work-related emigration!
Of course, this would be regarded as outlandish. And that’s where Indian sensitivity comes in. In the 1950s and 1960s when illegal migration to Britain was rife, New Delhi piously protested that exporting manpower was not its policy without, however, doing much to stop the traffic. Today, the government denounces American moves that might reduce the flow of Indian IT workers as discriminatory.
Some Indians are, indeed, trickling back, but we don’t know how many of the 100,000 or so to return did so because the recession killed their jobs. In any case, the six to eight lakhs who leave India annually prove that the Green Card is still the educated Indian’s dream. He salves his conscience by trotting out the plea that he serves India better by residing in the West with its higher income and better standard of living. Perhaps, that’s also why so many expats adopt an ultra-nationalistic line.
India needs its diaspora and is proud of its achievements. But we could do with a little less dissimulation.

The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author