Sunanda K Datta-Ray: India tops remitters' list

WHERE MONEY TALKS

It's difficult to decide whether that's good or bad news.

I have difficulty deciding whether it's good news or bad that according to World Bank figures, India topped last year's remittances league. Any exchequer would welcome the handsome $27 billion, up from $25.7 billion in 2005. But the implications of this inflow are less pleasing to a generation that took pride in believing that while one studied and even worked abroad for a while, anyone of substance lived and died at home.

It sounds snobbishly reminiscent of a British survey that found that the word "immigrant" has pejorative overtones in conventional English. But a bedrock of pragmatism usually underlies even subjective value judgments. Thus, when India was accused in the sixties of turning a blind eye to hordes of illegal emigrants from Punjab's Doaba region and retorted indignantly that it was not official policy to export manpower, it was really denying any push factor that compelled Indians to seek a living abroad.

There are formidable arguments on the other side. Our globalised world turns on the interaction of demand and supply. If jobs are going abegging in one part of the world and there's unemployed manpower in another, it's natural they should come together. The mobility of certain skills is a boon to mankind. Even if we can't beat the growth rate of the world's fastest growing economy, we can boast that though China's remittances also rose during the same period, it increased more modestly from $22.5 billion to $25.7 billion.

But there's no denying that just as migration offers a lifeline to under-privileged (relatively speaking) people, remittances help out impoverished governments. Not surprisingly then, $240 billion out of last year's recorded flow of $318 billion went to developing countries. It cannot be any accident either that the most refugees and asylum seekers are from the poorest nations. Jaffna Tamils and Muslim Kosovars may have socio-political reasons for fleeing their native lands but the economic rationale drives them to Western Europe.

Low income India accounts for the highest number of remitters (5.7 million) with Pakistan following with 3.3 million. But since Pakistan does not figure among the first four recipients, Pakistanis abroad must earn considerably less than Indians. That recalls an Indian ambassador in Washington lamenting that unlike his Pakistani colleague, he couldn't whip up a demonstration of taxi-drivers. Academics and World Bank, IMF and UN executives were reluctant to march up Capitol Hill with placards. Generally speaking, humbler workers contribute most to the kitty. A financial consultant in Geneva might salt away his fortune in the Bahamas but a construction worker in Dubai sends all he earns back to Kerala. Yet, the US with its high-end Indians, not Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Malaysia or other places where the combination of building boom and local prosperity means imported labour, is the main remittance source.

Some other inconsistencies must be noted.

First, I wonder who sent France, P5 and G7, a nuclear power that can say "No!" to the Lone Superpower, $12.5 billion from overseas during 2007. Large numbers of French people don't work abroad like Mexicans and Filipinos, to say nothing of Indians and Chinese. Francophone Quebeckers won't send money to the motherland that long ago washed its hands of them. Nor do nuns and priests straddle the globe for the French church itself needs clergymen from Francophone Africa. Perhaps there's a race explanation there. French citizens of African descent might send money to the metropole as insurance against old age or a rainy day. Upper class Vietnamese used to. Even the revolutionary Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, leader of Vietnam's delegation to the Paris peace talks and vice-president of united Vietnam, was reputed to own a house in a Paris suburb.

Second, while the US, with 38.4 million immigrants, is the understandable first choice of potential migrants, Russia (12.1 million) and Germany (10.1 million) also attract them. Russia probably has people from former Soviet republics, while Germany houses second generation Turkish workers.

Finally, there are seemingly grand exceptions like Rupert Murdoch or fellow-Australian James D. Wolfensohn, the World Bank's ninth president, who really prove the rule that some form of push factor (not necessarily monetary) is the most compelling reason for migration. Murdoch and Wolfensohn found the Australian stage too small, suggesting that Kipling's "the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady/ Are sisters under their skins!" unites peers of the realm and Bangladeshi labourers who seek a future beyond native shores. That's something no one should forget: however welcome the remittance, it is proof of failure at home.

sunanda.dattaray@gmail.com