Malay Telugus want to return

Malay Telugus want to return
By M. ROUSHAN ALI and S.A. ISHAQUI
Dec 16 2007
East or West, Indians seem to be getting into big trouble with local governments over the last two months.In November, the United Arab Emirates threw out nearly 80,000 illegal immigrants, many of them from Andhra Pradesh.Days later, a bitter row erupted in Malaysia after a protest by ethnic Indians for equal rights was brutally put down in Kuala Lumpur. The Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) has alleged ethnic cleansing and Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has joined the battle by accusing ethnic Indians of treachery.Telugus who have been staying in Malaysia for as long as five generations feel a sense of insecurity in the community.The November 25 rally by 20,000 ethnic Indians under the banner of Hindraf is just the beginning, say software professionals who returned home to Andhra Pradesh for better prospects.“More and more Telugus want to come back to their native places in Andhra Pradesh,” said Pawan Kumar, 60, who spent almost 10 years in Malaysia. Mr Kumar is now back in Visakhapatnam. “My brother-in-law, who had gone there as a software professional four years ago, has come back.” The Telugu community in Malaysia, once largely a community of labourers and menial jobs, today has a sprinkling of entrepreneurs, intellectuals and technical professionals.The vast majority of Indians still lag behind Malays and Chinese in socio-economic terms, and the racial policies of the Malaysian government, Telugus say, is only pushing them backwards.“The Indian community is being pushed to the corner by the Malays. Second, the job market is more vibrant back home. And third, the Telugu community itself treats its people based on their caste,” Mr Kumar said.Many Indian IT professionals have still not gotten over the mistreatment of 300 Indian citizens in March 2003 in Kuala Lumpur. Then, police surrounded a building housing mostly Indian IT professionals and beat them up on the pretext of checking their passports.IT professionals started returning to India after that incident. Many of them use Malaysia to travel to the US and Europe for better prospects and, hopefully, better conditions.An Indian Malaysian finds it difficult to become a doctor or a lawyer in Malaysia. University seats and scholarships are awarded under a racial quota system.Even if they manage to get a degree, many say that discrimination is commonplace. Indian doctors complain that they are often excluded from the list of approved doctors whom civil servants or company employees can patronise.According to rough estimates, there are an estimated 700 doctors, 350 lawyers, 400 engineers, 300 IT graduates and another 5,000 with degrees in various fields among Telugus in Malaysia. AP Official Language Commission chairman A.B.K. Prasad disagrees. “Telugus gel better with local Malays than the Tamilians. The fourth generation of Telugus has earned a lot of respect for the community by virtue of their education, profession, economic and social status.”“Of course, marriages with local Malay added towards improving relations with Malays,” Mr Prasad said.According to Telugu University registrar T. Gowrishankar, Telugus have done a lot to preserve their culture and language. “If they want to come back, it is purely because of the government policies there,” he added.Malaysian Telugus keep in regular touch with Telugu University to recruit teachers, priests and a range of support staff. Mr Gowrishankar said that unlike before, the tone of Malaysian Telugus was increasingly bitter when they talked about their status and prospects.Mr Gowrishankar also repeated Mr Kumar’s observations on fragmentation of ethnic Indians. “Vaishnavite groups want only Vaishnavite priests,” he said, citing one instance. This was not noticed before.
stranded in gulf
The problem with Indians in the Gulf is different. Most of the workers in the Gulf nations, estimated at about one crore, are first generation workers, unlike in Malaysia where the battle is between ethnic Indians who have settled in that country for generations.The vast majority of people going to the Gulf for jobs are illiterate. Hounded by poverty and unemployment, they easily fall for the offer of riches that agents and middlemen promise them.Thousands of migrants enter the Gulf nations on fake documents or overstay their visas. One of the biggest magnets to the UAE was the so-called azad visa.Indians could enter the UAE on the azad visa and scout for a job. Once employed, they would have to return to India and then go back to the UAE with fresh papers. As it happened, the workers merely stayed back, and got into trouble.Those who enter with all documents find that their papers are taken away by their employers. Their rights are ignored and pay conditions violated. For all practical purposes, they find themselves stuck with no help at hand. They work in horrible conditions, facing mental, physical and psychological and sometimes even sexual torture.It is clear in their mind that they cannot go back home: They have taken loans at usurious rates of interest to pay the agents, and they don’t have a paise to their name in the Gulf. Mr Abrar Ahmed of Toli Chowki in Hyderabad narrates the plight of a typical Gulf labour.“I had gone to the UAE with a lot of hope. The agent promised me the job of an electrician with good salary. When I went there, I was asked to work in a palm tree grove as a labourer. My passport was taken away by the agents there. With great difficulty, I came back thanks to the AP government’s initiative in ensuring the safe return of migrants.”On and off, the government has moved to place rules to protect labour. One such move is to ban the employment of women under the age of 30 to work as maids in the Gulf. Protests for rights are dealt with harshly. Last month’s protest at the Dubai Burj resulted in the arrest of over 500 workers, and the deportation of 90 of them. They were demanding an increase in salaries.Accidents are frequent, especially at construction sites, where dozens of migrant workers either die or are injured. Compensation is hard to come by for the injured. The bodies of the dead lie in mortuaries because of the tortuous procedures to bring them home, and the inability of the families to pay. Periodically, Gulf countries crack down on illegal migrants, as the United Arab Emirates did this year. It resulted in about 80,000 workers, mostly from Andhra Pradesh, being forced back home.They return to a situation that is worse than when they left. Mr P. Narayana Swamy, president of the Migrants Rights Council, says: “Back home, several of them have committed suicide, unable to repay loans and take care of families.”While the government disputes the figures, at least 50 Gulf oustees or members of their family have committed suicide over the last two months as a new tragedy unfolds in the hinterlands.
Mr Swami says, “One of the best ways to check the flow of illegal migrants to the Gulf is to streamline the recruitment process and keep a close watch on agents.”
AP minority welfare minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir, who is also chairman of the NRI Cell, says: “The government is working on stringent laws which would check unscrupulous agents dumping tens of hundreds of labour from the state in the Gulf countries.”