Unemployment at home pushes thousands of Indians to look overseas for work – even war zones. What’s missing is a coherent policy to protect them.
While illegal outmigration from India is nothing new – one study found that about 725,000 Indians now live illegally in the US – the movement of people to conflict zones reflects potential migrants’ desire to escape desperate conditions at home for a relatively better life elsewhere, even when confronted with human emergencies caused by war.
Indians migrating to Russia and then finding themselves thrown into the conflict as combatants, and hundreds of people in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana states signing up for jobs in Israel, underscore an important point: migrating to conflict zones is considered a better choice to the uncertainties caused by lack of employment at home.
A recent report made two startling claims: one, about 83% of India’s youth grapple with “soaring unemployment”. Second, the proportion of educated youth (15 to 29 years old), with at least secondary level education, among the country’s total unemployed youth jumped from 35.2% in 2002 to 65.7% in 2022.
26/04/2024
