India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 16 :: No. 02 :: Jan. 16 - 29, 1999

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THE STATES

The fatal lure of the West

Despite the tragedy in the Ionian Sea two year ago, the residents of the Doaba region in Punjab continue to try any means to secure jobs abroad.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Jalandhar

AT the shrine of Baba Kahan Dass in Kalla Sangia village, Kapurthala, only liquor is accepted as offering. Each evening, the menacing mixture of the many varieties of liquor that end up in the offering buckets is given to devotees. "Most people come here for only one thing," says regular worshipper Amrik Singh. "We believe Baba Kahan Dass can make our dream to go abroad come true."

It was two years this Christmas day since 280 illegal immigrants from South Asia drowned in the Ionian Sea off Malta, when the decrepit craft called Yiohan ferrying them to Italy went down (Frontline, January 15, 1997). As many as 166 of those who died were from Punjab, overwhelmingly from the affluent Doaba region between the Ravi and the Beas rivers. In all 110 survivors were later arrested and deported back to India, while nothing is known about 39 persons who were seen making off in one of the few lifeboats available on the Yiohan. One of the members of this last group, Manjit Singh of Alampur Bakkan village, wrote some months ago to his parents, informing them that he was alive and well and that he had found work as a labourer in Italy. For obvious reasons, he gave no address, but promised to come back when he earned enough money to do so.

But it seems little has changed in the Doaba, a region with a long history of sending its young people to the West. After the initial shock, business is increasingly returning to normal. All the 26 accused in India in the case relating to the incident are out on bail. Indeed, the charges against them relate only to Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with fraud. No charges of murder can be brought until a seven year period ends, officials say, because there is no hard proof that anyone actually died. The Yiohan's captain Yousef al-Halal and his assistant Eftiychis Zervoudakis are yet to be brought to justice. A survivors' group recently formed by Sarban Dass, the father of a victim, has moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court for compensation to the families of the dead, but the claim is being vigorously contested by the Government. Representatives of the survivors are also attempting to lobby foreign governments for aid, but their chances of success seem thin.

THE virtual vanishing of the tragedy from public memory does not mean that everyone has forgotten it. Two years ago, Gurdip Singh of Bhootan Pundher village lost his only son, 28-year-old Gurmail Singh, in the Ionian Sea. Time might have passed but memories refuse to go away. Gurdip Singh is still repaying the Rs.1.9 lakh loan he took from a local moneylender to meet the costs of his son's fateful journey to the West. The moneylender charges a staggering 3 per cent monthly interest on the loan, and the farmer with just two acres of land is in a position to meet only the interest component. Gurmail Singh had gone abroad principally to fund the wedding of his sisters, one of which took place after his death, and the family's debts have mounted.

Amarjit Singh, the local travel agent who put Gurmail Singh on to the Malta group's main organisers, is absconding and has been declared a proclaimed offender. The village panchayat has, however, decided that Joginder Kaur, his wife, must pay Rs.50,000 to Gurdip Singh, although she herself is in penury. She does not dispute the suggestion that she must pay for her husband's crime, but argues that all that she can afford is Rs.7,000. Interestingly, no one in Bhooton Pundher even suggests that the moneylender be asked to suspend loan repayments or reduce his rate of interest. "Why should he?" asks Gurdip Singh. "No one else would have lent me money, certainly not the banks. Of course the moneylender will charge high rates of interest in such a situation."

The tragedy has not, however, prevented villagers from borrowing money or selling their land to go abroad. Karnail Singh and Narain Singh are brothers and live under the same roof in Chitti village. Both sent their sons on the journey across the Ionian Sea. Jaspal Singh, Karnail Singh's son, survived the tragedy. In a letter he wrote shortly before being deported back to India, he described how he had tried to save his cousin, Avtar Singh, by throwing out his untied turban for him to hold on to. But Avtar Singh, a college student who had quit his studies to make the journey, was pulled away by high waves and the undertow. For months, the family was in mourning, shattered by the loss of a son. Jaspal Singh himself was a broken man, ridden by a sense of guilt for having agreed to take Avtar Singh on his final journey.

HARDIP PURI
Two brothers of Chitti village, Narain Singh and Karnail Singh, with the photographs of Avtar Singh, Narain Singh's son who died in the Ionian Sea tragedy in 1996, and Jaspal Singh, Karnail Singh's son who tried in vain to save his cousin.

It seems no one in the family finds anything odd in the fact that Jaspal Singh has gone abroad again. They are reticent about whether he did so illegally or was helped by an agent. His father defends his action. "Jaspal has had to go abroad to make ends meet," he points out. "What will he do here? Slave for some private company for Rs.1,500 a month? What sort of life is that?" Similar sentiments evidently abound elsewhere. Villagers at Bhooton Pundher told Frontline that eight boys from neighbouring Khorewala had recently been sent abroad by a travel agent. Says one villager: "The only difference the tragedy has made is that everyone made sure they were sent by air to eastern Europe and by road from there. It costs a bit more, but is a lot safer."

If the trail West continues to be thronged by travellers, it is also inhabited by a colourful array of innovative charlatans, fraudsters and conmen. Last summer, a former Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel P.P. Sharma, who ran a detective firm in Ludhiana, began taking deposits of up to Rs.75,000 as brokerage and travel fees from people wanting to secure jobs for their sons in South Korea. All that Sharma had to prove that he could indeed deliver on his promise was a forged document on a crudely manufactured Airports Authority of Korea letterhead. The letter asked Sharma to recruit "initially one thousand unskilled labourers / helpers for our new project starting in July 1997." They would be paid "according to Korean labour law," an "amount equal to US$ 600 per month and an overtime of US$ 10 per additional hour at labourer's risk."

Neither the letter's appalling English nor its bizarre references to "blanket visas" were enough to raise even the slightest suspicion. Sharma had blacked out sections of the letter, telling clients that he had done so to ensure that potential rivals would not steal his business. Such secrecy and Sharma's affluent lifestyle led 106 people to cough up over Rs.60 lakh by the end of 1997. Among the victims was one of Sharma's own employees, retired Air Force Warrant Officer R.P. Singh. Even though Sharma's mandated recruitment deadline of July 1997 had expired, he managed to stall for time, roping in more and more gullible Jalandhar residents. After one disgruntled client went to the police, Sharma still played innocent. He issued refund cheques, all of which were to bounce, and fled Jalandhar.

R.P. Singh is stoic as he discusses his absconding former boss. "Yes, I was fooled," he says, "but I wanted my son to get a good job. What's wrong with that?" Perhaps he is right, for as Doaba's scams go, he got off lightly. Take Deepak Anand, who set up "International Education Consultants" early this year, promising clients that a fee of Rs.40,000 would guarantee placement at an Australian university and, more important, a visa. There were problems. For one, Anand had barely scraped through seventh grade at school, a fact that did not help inspire confidence in his credentials as an educational consultant. Then, he and his Dehra Dun-based partners issued receipts for only Rs.5,000, and not the whole amount received. But these did not deter the desperate residents of Jalandhar who had a one-point programme - escape to the West.

Anand's modus operandi was simple. Although one of his clients, Sukhjit Singh, had barely passed his Plus-2 examination, admission was easily secured at a cash-strapped and evidently dubious business school. Indeed, it is richly ironic that while the West condemns illegal immigrants, it is perfectly happy to tolerate legal fleecing of Third World people. Anand allegedly forged documents to convince the Australian High Commission that Sukhjit Singh's father had the resources to fund his education abroad. He allegedly obtained fake land records, bank statements and valuers' assessments showing that Mohinder Singh had assets worth over Rs.1 crore, and a monthly income of Rs.5 lakhs. All was set for Sukhjit Singh to go abroad: but again, one of Anand's customers complained, and the racket was shut down. Anand has refunded what he earned from the scam, but his partners have fled.

"I'm just one of the four consultants in Jalandhar," Anand bitterly complains. "Why am I being singled out?" It is not an easy question to answer, the most plausible rationale being that no one else's clients have complained. The Doaba's desperation to go abroad pushes people to make themselves gullible enough to try any possibility. Consider Sukhjit Singh's plaintive statement of purpose, written to get him admission at the Australian business school:

"In the world International trade has big scope for employment. I have reached the market and found that there are ample opportunities for successful career for a person like me. From my very childhood, it was my dream to study in foreign country and now I see my dream turning into a reality. My parents are giving me a life time opportunities to study in your country. On completion of my two year course I will be a completely refind (refined) person who can be very successful in the field of internationally import expert costoms (Customs) and Transport. My purpose to form an Internationally recognised qualification so that I can become a successful in my life."

Sukhjit Singh's statement of purpose is not as funny as it is tragic. The desperation of those in the Doaba region to go abroad illustrates the fact that civil society in the region, despite its affluence, has ceased to provide young people with a vision of what their future might be. The road West does not just represent prosperity, but social status and prestige. "When boys come back home for holidays," says Gurdip Singh, "they are treated like heroes, even though they might just be sweeping toilets abroad." "They look fair, wear smart clothes and speak English. The whole village looks up to them." Joginder Kaur says succinctly: "People criticise agents when deals go wrong. But they never ask what they were doing standing in lines outside our doors begging for a chance to go abroad in the first place."

Police officials appear to be pessimistic about the whole affair. "We've come down very hard on dubious travel agents after the Malta tragedy," says Inspector Daljit Singh, who heads Jalandhar's District Economic Offences Wing, which was set up after the deaths. "But the result has been to push the trade underground, not end it." Daljit Singh estimates that some 1,000 young people, mainly from Doaba, continue to leave the country illegally each year. And a good number pay to do so but never make it. In 1997, almost half of the 275 cases registered by the Economic Offences Wing related to immigration scams. This year the number of registered cases has come down to 206, largely because the unit cannot cope with the workload. A single investigating officer, Shingara Singh, handles 32 fraud inquiries simultaneously.

Daljit Singh, who writes regularly in the Punjabi press, is clear about what a long-term answer might constitute. "Illegal immigration is like drug-running: policing alone cannot solve the problem." The answer, he says, is for Western governments to come to terms with the fact that the tide of Third World poor jumping over their fences will not disappear. "It would be far better if the Indian Government could reach accords allowing certain numbers of people to go to work abroad each year. That way, a system based on a proper waiting list could be set up in India, which would protect immigrants from the dangers of the illegal route. It is the only way." Meanwhile, the inspector says that radio, television and folk theatre have to be used to make people aware of the realities.

The problem with Daljit Singh's solution is that the West is not listening: free movement of goods and services yes, it says, but not of labour. On November 22, immigration authorities of the United States busted a ring that moved South Asians, mainly Indians, through eastern Europe into the Bahamas and then on to Miami. U.S. Attorney-General Janet Reno said that the ring moved an estimated 300 illegal immigrants into the U.S. each month over three years. Its organisers made over $220 million from the trade and routed the funds into bank accounts in Canada, Europe and West Asia. "Let all those who flout the country's laws be warned," Reno proclaimed.

But despite such action, the trade goes on untouched. Frontline's interviews in Doaba, conducted after the U.S. raids, showed the illegal immigration road was open for traffic despite state intervention. So every month illegal immigrants die, suffocated in goods trucks or crammed into marine cargo. Those who make it find themselves at the mercy of labour touts for jobs, paying up to half their wages for "protection".

Clearly, the odd roadblock placed on the route West, or layers of barbed wire fences and policemen, will do little to end the problem. No one in the West, it is clear, really cares enough for Third World lives to seriously address the issue.