Behind the 100 bn USD

Charanjit’s placement in a Polish factory has been revoked. 

My sister’s antennae had gone up when she noticed that the appointment letter was issued by a Ukrainian firm. 

“Is this kosher?” she had asked me. I had no basis on which to answer. Her instinct was right, and after several months of waiting on the visa formalities, the labour agent told the boy’s family that Poland was no longer on the cards.

For five years now, Vir Singh, our chauffeur of three decades, has been trying to secure a future for his son. When Charan turned eighteen, he was sent to a training camp for army aspirants. Despite its rigours, he was too scrawny to clear the physical. He cleared it the next year, but a minor health hiccup was identified by the medical board, and had to be ‘fixed’. Fixers abound, and the year after he failed the written exam, a fee was fixed for him to make it to the shortlist in the next attempt. But then recruitments into the army were frozen, and when they did open, it was under the Agniveer scheme, which offered placement for for only five years. 

All this while, we had urged Vir Singh to create options for his son - undergo some vocational training, learn to drive a car, or a tractor. 

“Private naukri nahin chahiye, Didi”, he would say. Many family members and neighbours in his Hoshiarpur village were army men, and with a subedar major’s pensions now running to 38,000 rupees a month, the seductive nature of a government job was apparent. But when Agniveer shut the door on army pensions, the sights shifted to other lands, which import labour from India. Two nephews have gone to New Zealand, several boys from the village work on an Italian farm, and the subedar major’s daughters - “padhi likhi hain” - are studying to be nurses in Canada. 

Last week, Vir Singh ran us through the price list for emigration services - Poland would have cost 8 lakhs, Italy 12, and New Zealand runs to 22.  Vir Singh’s son-in-law drove a truck in Dubai, and is now awaiting a UK visa. He’s talking to his ex-employers - the sheikhs - Vir Singh calls them, to see if they will train Charan towards getting a truck driver’s licence. “I’ve spoken to my elder brother, and we’ll sell the land at the far end of the village to pay for his licence.”

A couple of years ago, the land would have fetched 2 lakhs a kanal, but prices have dropped to 1.5 lakhs. I express some surprise. 

“No one’s farming any longer", Vir Singh explains. 

“With the young people all gone, most of our neighbours have even stopped keeping buffalos - it’s simpler to buy a couple of litres of milk a day.” 

Ever since I've known Vir Singh, he has taken great pride in his village, in the golden fields growing the wheat that feeds the family for a year, in the buffalos whose milk is thick and creamy. Now he wants to part with this heritage to pay for parting with his son, the joy of his being, the child for whom he had so much ambition.

You can judge Vir Singh's mood by the volume at which he engages with the guards in the neighbourhood. Yesterday, as I sipped my morning coffee, the soundscape of the driveway was subdued. He came into the living room after breakfast, saw I was on a call, and returned an hour later.

"I'm not finding a buyer for the land. The only moneyed man in the village is dealing with a loss of 32 lakhs. He's paid for a UK visa for his son, but the boy has been waiting for the papers in Delhi for 3 months now."

"No buyers at any price?" I ask.

"Someone has offered 1 lakh a kanaal. But my brothers won't agree. In any case, that won't foot the bill."

A pause.

"Today, I sent him to work at MNREGA."

At lunch, my sister asks whether we should pay for the licence. 

"Part grant, part loan", I suggest.

"I'll return it when the eucalyptus trees mature - in 4 years", Vir Singh promises.

"Sure, but your son must pay part of it back from his wages."

"He will, he's a good lad".

That he is - we got to know him when Vir Singh was in a Delhi hospital with a lingering pulmonary infection.

We're paying for this good lad to build a life away from family and hearth, we're paying to build the flow of inward remittances that shore up Indian foreign exchange balances. But we're reminded that behind that 100 bn dollars a year, there are tens of millions of families torn apart by the lack of an economic future in India.