Executive Summary
India stands as the largest sender of migrant workers to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, where Indian migrant workers are increasingly transitioning from low- and medium-skilled jobs to highly skilled workers. This policy report on India aims to propose innovative policy recommendations for optimising high-skilled migration, focusing on the unique challenges and opportunities presented by the Gulf states.
To facilitate this process, India should adopt a laissez-faire policy, which would create the necessary conditions for the supply of highly skilled migrants. This passive role is essential for optimising migration flows, allowing skilled workers to move more easily.
The “sufficient conditions” would be met by the demand-driven policies of UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as is the case with major destination countries determining the flows and stocks of highly skilled Indian immigrants. Therefore, the onus would be on them to devise similar though not necessarily identical policies – to address the drivers at the micro level (individuals, families, and students), meso-level (educational institutions and the employer firms and industries), and the macro level (the national and state governments). These demand-driven policies must first be geared towards ensuring stability and freedom from the uncertainties of arbitrary and unanticipated fluctuations in visa regulations and the role they play in determining immigrant labour markets.
The policy report addresses three basic questions: (1) Which policies should be implemented? (2) Why should these policies be implemented? and (3) How should these policies be implemented? Each of these questions needs to be answered in terms of three separate time horizons: short run, medium run, and long run. In the short run, ready-made highly skilled personnel must be attracted to migrate to the Gulf through fast-track temporary and circular migration pathways. In the medium run, relevant occupational positions need to be filled through two pathways: direct recruitment from India through lateral entry and internal promotion within the Gulf country concerned. In the long run, the focus should be on the formation and training of highly skilled workers within the Gulf countries as part of their diversification plans from an oil-based economy to a knowledge-based economy.
Several challenges will need to be addressed in order to bring the desired paradigm shift in the three Gulf countries, and they are listed below. The answers to questions in item 3 (how policies should be implemented) must position the three Gulf countries in a comparative advantage, promoting a win-win outcome for both them and India, rather than engaging in a hide-and-seek game of non-reciprocity and exclusive self-interest.
To compete effectively with the established players in the Global North, the three Gulf countries must avoid direct competition with them or among themselves. One way of doing this would be to leave the “best for the West” and instead target those who would come next, i.e., pursuing the Theory of the Second Best.
This will at least ensure the necessary conditions for success. To match them with sufficient conditions, the three Gulf countries must address the “trinity of dynamic conflicts of interest,” i.e., of “Age-Wage and Graduates.” In simple terms, the Gulf country concerned must largely target the youth in the age groups of 20 – 35; the lower-wage-earning temporary and circulatory migrants; and recently graduated students embodied with latest advancements of frontier knowledge as future workers - the three attributes which potentially abound in India’s present demographic dividend which is projected to last until the middle of the twenty-first century.
Introduction
Given that the demand-driven policies of major destination countries determine the flows and stocks of highly skilled Indian immigrants (entrepreneurs, professionals, and tertiary students), it becomes imperative for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to devise similar but not necessarily the same policies. This involves addressing the drivers of migration decisions at the micro-level (individuals, families, and students), meso-level (educational institutions and the employer firms and industries), and, above all, transnational political economy considerations at the macro-level (national and regional governments). These are to be distinguished as the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful policy outcomes.
Practically speaking, as an origin country, India’s passive role through the laissez-faire policy would provide only the “necessary conditions” for optimisation of high-skill migration to Gulf countries. The “sufficient conditions” must be initiated by Gulf countries’ policies, first in ensuring stability and freedom from uncertainties of arbitrary fluctuations in visa regulations playing the determining role in labour markets. Given this, there are three basic and fundamental questions that must be addressed while talking about high-skill migration policies:
- What policies should be implemented?
- Why should these policies be implemented?
- How should these policies be implemented?
“What policies” is a question that can be answered by identifying variables based on their differentiated time horizons. Such stratification of policies is needed because full and complete transformation in paradigm cannot be expected overnight. These policies may, therefore, be classified in terms of three separate time horizons: 1. short-run, 2. medium-run, and 3. long-run.
Short-Run Policies
In the short run, ready-made highly skilled Indians must be attracted to migrate to the Gulf country through fast-track temporary and circular migration with pathways either to (i) Return to India based on the Melbourne model, or (ii) migrate to a third country using the Gulf as a transit country, or (iii) to obtain permanent resident status and gain citizenship in the Gulf country.
These policies would be geared toward directly filling the gaps on the shop floors (a) in the value chain of goods production like merchandise and delivery of services like healthcare, through workers equivalent to the ILO ISCO-08 Occupation Level 2 (Professionals) and 3 (Supervisors) and (b) in other sectors like teaching in educational institutions to contribute to future skill formation of domestic as well as overseas students in the knowledge building systems through the ILO ISCO-08 Occupation Level 2 (in Higher Education) and 3 (for instance, short-cycle tertiary education) or their equivalents.
Medium-Run Policies
In the medium-run, managerial personnel at ILO ISCO-08 Level 1 occupations or equivalent need to be filled through two pathways: (i) direct recruitment from India through lateral entry with better pay and service conditions (PPP – Pay, Perks, and Pensions) that can compete with other western countries in the talent war, and (ii) through internal promotion within the Gulf country concerned for those recruited through the short-run mechanism with focus on their “retention” against (a) return to India and (b) onward migration to more developed countries of the Global North.
Long-Run Policies
For the long-run, the focus should be on formation of highly skilled workers within the Gulf country as part of their diversification goals from oil economies to knowledge economies – by way of investment in human capital of (a) domestic children and (b) overseas/international students – attracted by innovative financial incentives like lifelong scholarships based on the models of tied-aid as practiced in countries like Singapore. In addition, a novel pathway would be through on-the-job training (OJT) programmes to transition existing low and medium-skilled migrant workers with track records of excellence.
Challenges and Policy Implications
The challenge of transforming from low and medium-skilled immigration to high-skilled immigration from India needs to be addressed by adopting innovative policies concerning the three destination countries in the Gulf for different professions in the first three categories of ILO’s ISCO-08 classification or equivalents. The hard truth, however, is that the onus would be on destination countries to prompt India to do so, as India does not highly prioritise emigration policy for the highly skilled. Most of its programmes are geared towards the welfare and protection of low and medium-skilled migrant labour to the Gulf, Malaysia, and elsewhere. India does have bilateral agreements with multiple countries in terms of free trade agreements (FTAs), but these are confined to some Global North countries like the recent ones with Greece, Japan, and Israel, and for youth training and employment of non-ISCO-1, 2, 3 or equivalent high-level occupations.
For all these, the “why these policies” question arises from obligations of countries to align their migration objectives with the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and GCM (Global Compact for Migration) through South-South cooperation under the leadership of India in BRICS through what I have elsewhere called EAA – Equitable Adversary Analysis.
Key Challenges to Address
The challenges to be addressed for bringing a paradigm shift in the destinations for highly skilled Indians towards the Gulf countries are:
- Competition in the talent war with existing hubs in the Global North countries.
- Countering India’s brain drain through circular migration in terms of repeated visits rather than a once-and-for-all move for permanent settlement.
- Catching them young by the Gulf countries investing in their life-long education within India by offering competitive scholarships to students from economically underprivileged backgrounds. This could be in exchange for a promise to work in the sponsoring Gulf country for a stipulated number of years – e.g., follow the Singapore model of sponsorship.
- Twinning arrangements between established Indian institutions and the emerging ones in the Education Cities in the three Gulf countries.
- Attracting highly skilled Indians by time-sharing in the Gulf country (in winter) and India (in summer), based on my lived experience with the Melbourne model.
- Propagating a new model of global commons for STEM professionals – scientists for preventive vaccine research, doctors and nurses for curative health services – alternating between India and the Gulf countries.
- Financial incentives – lucrative compensation packages in both cash (higher salaries) and kind (time-scaled perks like children’s education, sports and health facilities, etc.) by adopting the Japanese model of loyalty to the employers.
- Fund the education of children of highly skilled migrant Indians in third countries of the Global North.
- Tax breaks along with Double Tax Avoidance Agreements (DTAA) between India and the Gulf country concerned.
Thus, the new strategy for Indian policies may lie in finding answers to the “how these policies” question for making the highly skilled Indian migrant labour chase a new “Gulf Dream” in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar along the lines of the so-called “American Dream”, or to follow a “Make it in the Gulf” programme along the lines of the “Make it in Germany” programme. These may be specifically geared to attract and retain the highly skilled Indian immigrants by leveraging the two indirect fronts of Indian education and Indian employment – both high on India’s political economy agenda than the direct front of India’s migration policy, which is skewed towards the low-skilled migrant workers.
Conclusion
The Gulf countries’ policies have to coax the Indian decision makers at the micro level (individual migrants and their families), meso level (the employing companies in both public and private sectors), and macro level (Indian policy making legislative and executive bureaucracies at the federal and state/regional levels) to experiment with novel modes of migration pathways that would steer them clear of the competition with the existing hubs in the Global North, and position them in a comparative advantage of promoting a win-win for both the origin and destination countries rather than playing the hide and seek game of non-reciprocity and exclusive self-interest.
The above narrative of strategic policy moves, aligning with India’s vision 2047 to attain the status of a developed country at 100 years of independence, would provide an opportunity to bring the issue of migration from far marginalised corners to the centre stage in the bilateral or mini-multilateral EAA negotiations. More specifically, the South-South migration would be the kingpin for global partnerships among the dark horses with effective follow-up of achievable target setting and time-bound pathways backed by the estimates of the required budgets and their funding sources. This would, however, entail meticulous projections into the future – both quantitative and qualitative. Such an exercise cannot be accomplished overnight by wishful thinking about imaginary targets, but through a dedicated project, the details of which could be discussed separately. One pre-requisite for such an exercise to be successful will be zero-tolerance of detractions in the facilitation of simultaneously gathering, compiling, and updating of data and information (as the available data are utterly outdated and the required ones are either simply not available, or if available, not readily shared by the countries).
To win the game against the established players in the Global North, the three Gulf countries must avoid getting into competition against them or among themselves. One way of doing this would be to leave the “best for the West” to scramble for and adopt the strategy inherent in the Theory of the Second Best. For example, there are enough bright aspiring Indian youth who are unsuccessful in clearing the tough IIT-JEE (Indian Institutes of Technology – Joint Entrance Examination) to get selected for admission and become engineers and move to the “greener pastures” abroad. For example, In 2021, about 900,000 students appeared for IIT-JEE Mains, and out of these, just 141,699 qualified to take the JEE Advanced Exam. Of these, 41,862 students, or only about 29%, finally qualified for admission into one of the 23 IITs but only 16,296, or about 12%, were ultimately offered a place1. I would say that the remaining 71% of “surplus” aspirants who did not go past the Advanced Exam were the “second best” but no less talented 2.
This mass of unabsorbed surplus engineering talent could be the potential high-skilled immigrants for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to capitalise on. The same applies to NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) for medical education to become doctors, or the CAT (Common Admission Test) to get into the IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) to become top ranking managers, and even the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) examinations for public servants and administrators, bank and insurance examinations for financiers, and so on. The Gulf countries may target these second-best as potential aspirants as highly skilled immigrants, as they are equally talented and capable of contributing to the future human capital. In addition, they are likely to have better social capital of interpersonal relations after having tasted rejection.
These and many other innovative or out-of-the-box strategies will satisfy the necessary conditions for success. To match them with sufficient conditions, the three Gulf countries ought to address what I call the “trinity of dynamic conflicts of interest,” namely, “Age-Wage and Vintage.” In simple terms, the Gulf country concerned must largely target the younger highly skilled – the youth in the age groups of 20-35; the lower-wage-earning temporary and circulatory migrants; and the latest vintage of students with embodied frontier knowledge as future workers – the three attributes which abound in India’s present demographic dividend and are projected to last at least until the middle of the twenty-first century. This would be an innovative policy worth experimenting with by the three Gulf countries visa-a-vis India as the origin country of highly skilled migrants.
Endnotes
1. Niazi, Shuriah 2022: Thousands sit ‘world’s toughest’ entrance exam for IITs, University World News, 27 August 2022, in: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20220827085440234#:~:text=Last%20year [10.12.2024].
2. Examination Review Committee 2001: ExaminationReviewCommittee2001.pdf, Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, in: https://darpg.gov.in/sites/default/files/ExaminationReviewCommittee2001.pdf [10.12.2024].
