When you leave a country, you leave much behind.
Pardeep and Vijay Saini from Punjab, aged 22 and 19, smuggled themselves into the wheel-bay of a British Airways flight to Heathrow. When the plane reached an altitude of around 40,000 feet, the temperature around them would have plummeted to -40°C. About 10 hours later, as the plane was about to land, the wheel bay opened and Vijay landed in England head first, dead on arrival. Pardeep was unconscious and taken to a hospital. By the time he recovered, he was both an illegal immigrant and a hero. He was about to be deported. Humanitarian groups intervened. Last heard, he was settled in Wembley, a family man. The Sainis’ great escape from India took place in October 1996.
Cut to the present. Last Saturday, a third plane-lot of illegal immigrants apprehended in the US landed in Amritsar. There will be thousands more, forced to return to the land they fled for a better quality of life. The Sainis were lower middle class. The illegal immigrants returning from the US are mostly landed middle class: each would have spent up to `50 lakh to middlemen for taking the ‘dunki’ (donkey) route and settling abroad.
The donkey route is how the aspirants fly to visa-free countries such as Ecuador or Serbia, followed by overland journeys across multiple borders, including crossings through deserts, jungles or sea routes. Many migrants travel through Central America to reach the US via Mexico, or attempt entry into Europe through Turkey and the Balkans.
The path to happiness is paved with grief. Only recently, a family—father, mother and two kids—perished in a snowy winter near the Canadian border. These are not criminals, just a normal, harmless family who broke a law or two to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is often fatal.
The point to note is that whether it is the Saini brothers then or the middle-class deportees now, the urge to run away from India is abiding. That great old notion that life is elsewhere. Which also explains why so many refugees from Bangladesh are in India—numbering around 20 million, as Kiren Rijiju told parliament as the then minister of state for home affairs. One must suppose a refugee is one who takes his ‘unwantedness elsewhere’, as the late Vijay Nambisan said in his poem ‘Madras Central’.
Unlike in the past, the so-called illegal migrants of these days have some liquidity and are open to all kinds of work. When they set out, they clearly had some money. Without this they could not have embarked on their journeys. Many of them sold land, mortgaged property, or took crippling loans to finance their expeditions. Now back home, they have no jobs, no money and, in some cases, no acceptance from families who see them as burdens. Their boys and girls have come back in masks, without bulging suitcases.
The wealth they had could have perhaps been put to better use back home. But how easy is it to start an enterprise in their homeland? India remains one of the lowest-ranked nations on business-friendliness and social security. It ranks 141st by per-capita GDP and 134th on the Human Development Index. Millions of us are still in the Vedic age of development.
There is an unspoken stigma attached to deportees. In villages where success is measured by foreign remittances and “Canada-wale” grooms are prized, returning empty-handed is seen as shameful. Many deported migrants hide, refusing to step out in public for weeks. Parents downplay their child’s failure, concocting stories about expired visas rather than admitting they were caught and sent back.
For the returnees, the psychological toll is considerable. Depression and anxiety would set in—especially for those who face financial ruin. Punjab has announced a rehabilitation programme. But not Gujarat, where the affliction of illegal emigration is raging. In the latest shipment home from the US, out of the 112 deportees, 33 are from Gujarat. The government ought to conduct a survey so that we know the deportees’ social and economic backgrounds.
Initiatives like the Pravasi Kaushal Vikas Yojana (Overseas Skill Development Scheme) attempt to prepare potential migrants for legal work opportunities abroad; but they do little for those who have returned. More localised solutions—such as village-level employment programmes, mental health support and tighter regulation of illegal migration networks—are the keywords here.
At last week’s joint press conference with President Trump, Prime Minister Modi said the deportees were poor and innocent victims of human traffickers. And that he will eliminate the middleman. But the truth is that the middlemen did not drag fully-grown adults into trucks and boats.
The elimination of the possibly-deceptive middleman is only a partial answer to the problem. The real culprit driving the silent exodus and the loud return is the emigrants’ desperation for a more beautiful life. India seems unable to provide that despite 77 years of freedom. No American, German or Britisher is looking around for a donkey route out.
An equal challenge in reversing the migration of the desperados is psychological. How does a country convince its youth that success is possible within its borders? According to the Henley Passport Index, India ranks 85th on the ease of crossing borders. Several governments have tried to upgrade the country’s travel quotient and, in varying degrees, failed. And there rests the case.
(Views are personal)
(cpsurendran@gmail.com)
C P Surendran | Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B