By Anuradha Nagaraj
VENNIYUR, India, March 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Every evening, three generations of worried Angatt family women meet outside a half-built bungalow in this village in India’s southern Kerala state.
Nearly six months after the house’s foundation was laid and its two floors raised, construction has slowed to a near halt. The reason is never discussed out loud – only whispered cautiously.
“My husband said there are problems in the Gulf. Everything is suddenly more expensive and he is not able to save as much,” murmured Faseela Angatt, 29, who is overseeing the building while her husband works in the finance department of a Dubai firm.
“The construction depends on the money he sends – and now it is a little less,” she said.
For nearly four decades, the Angatt family has prospered on “Gulf money”. Faseela’s father spent more than 30 years working there, and his son-in-law and other relatives have followed in his footsteps.
The remittances the migrants send back have built big houses across Kerala’s Malappuram district – and Faseela, whose husband has spent nine years in the Gulf, is counting on one of her own soon.
But the boom is fading. An economic slowdown in the Gulf, fluctuating oil prices and changes to labour policies mean fewer migrants are flying out of the district’s Calicut airport than before – and many are returning.
That is “adversely affecting” the flow of remittances to India, the Reserve Bank of India noted in a 2016 report.
“Unskilled workers, employed as drivers and labourers, are coming back in larger numbers,” said Amit Meena, the administrative head of Malappuram, which has an estimated 300,000 workers in the Gulf – at least one from every home.
“And back home, they are in a fix because the loan payments are mounting for the big homes they built or the cars they bought with Gulf money,” he said.
As migration increases around the world – spurred by climate extremes, conflict and economic stresses – remittances are helping boost prosperity, from Nepal to Haiti.
But the crucial flow of cash that families and countries have come to depend on is vulnerable to everything from shifting political policy on migration to economic slowdowns.
