KOCHI: In a worrying sign for the remittance-dependent Kerala economy, more than half of the 1.43 lakh NRKs who arrived from abroad in the evacuation mission since May, following the Covid outbreak, have lost their jobs. Revealing the numbers, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, during his daily news conference in Thiruvananthapuram, said 74,849 of 1,43,147 who returned from abroad (52%) have lost their jobs.
To address the situation, the chief minister announced a ‘Dream Kerala’ project aimed at channelling the skill sets and experience of the overseas returnees to help them set up viable projects in the state. “The aim is to tap the potential and experience of the returning pravasi Malayalis,” he said.
However, experts are not convinced about the outcome of the ‘Dream Kerala’ initiative saying the economic climate in the state and in India is not feasible for new projects to take shape.
Further, the number of people who will come back after losing their jobs is expected to swell in the coming months, they added.“This is not reverse migration. This is just a teaser of things to come. We’ll have to wait till December to know the real picture of those who have returned to Kerala,” said Irudaya Rajan of the Centre for Development Studies (CDS).
“The Indian economy is doing really bad, and Kerala is also in a bad financial state. It’s not easy for them to survive here. In my interactions with a large number of expats, what I gather is a third of those who have returned will go back looking for jobs,” said Rajan, an expert on migration. He said the jobless returnees will be ready to work for half the salary they earned earlier. K V Joseph, director, International Institute of Migration and Development, said: “Covid is not going to go away soon. And the Kerala Government doesn’t have the money. Without funds, it’s not going to be easy to implement the new projects.”
We were spending on consumption
Further, as per the government’s own calculation, the state economy will shrink by 15% or B1.25 lakh crore from B8 lakh crore this year, he said. “When we had the money, we were spending on consumption. The government has not made the state an investment-friendly location yet,” Joseph said. The CM said the remittance by Keralites stood at Rs 85,000 crore as per the 2018 economic survey while the NRI deposits in Kerala’s banks stood at around B1.7 lakh crore.