It’s high time India got its emigration act together

Of the 76,548 international students enrolled in Ukraine's universities, 18,000 are from India. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Over the years, India has done a fairly good job in the safe return of its citizens during the time of a crisis. However, could India have handled the repatriation of its students in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war, and its citizens from different countries in 2020 after the COVID-19 outbreak in a better manner? Migration experts feel so.

“If we had an updated Emigration Act and a migration policy, we could have managed the rescue operations of Indian students from Ukraine without this confusion, says Rafeek Ravuther, a Kerala-based migrant rights activist for the last two decades.

The lack of an updated policy meant that when a crisis came our officials in the Indian embassies in Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and Romania were clueless in the initial days. The lack of a Standard Operating Procedure added to the confusion, Ravuther told this author.

India still manages migration, including student migration, on the basis of with The Emigration Act, 1983. Unfortunately — rather surprisingly — this Act does not have norms on student migration, and student visa. In 2019, the Government of India prepared an updated version of the Act, The Emigration Bill, 2019.

This had detailed norms to streamline student migration to foreign countries in pursuit of academic purposes. In Chapter III, the Bill stated that registration of students flying abroad was mandatory.

"Every student before his departure from India shall intimate the competent authority in such manner and subject to such conditions as may be specified by regulations," the Bill read.

The Bill also stated that the registration of enrolment agencies, which send students abroad, was mandatory.

Commenting on the lapses, Mini Mohan, a migrant rights activist, if the government had passed the Bill in 2019, then we would have handled the Ukraine student crisis in a better way.

"In the initial stage of Ukraine war, when I talked to many senior officials in Ministry of External Affairs, none of them were aware on how many Indian students were stuck in Ukraine,” says Mohan.

The number of Indian students studying abroad or the modes through which they are encouraged to study abroad is a grey area which the government can at best guesstimate about.

"Former Indian students from these foreign universities act as enrolment agencies. They don't fall under the radar of the Indian government. So, eventually, when a crisis like Ukraine unfolds, we don't how many students are there, now do we know how to evacuate them," Mohan added.

The 2019 Bill lapsed and has been updated as The Emigration Bill 2021.

Surprisingly, the 2021 Bill neither talks about student emigration nor enrolment agencies. In the 2019 Bill, it was stated that “emigrate” and “emigration” means the departure out of India by any person with a view to taking up employment, or otherwise, including herein students in pursuit of academic interest in any country outside India. When it comes to the 2021 Bill, “emigrate” and “emigration” get reduced to the departure out of India by any person with a view to taking up any employment.

It is puzzling why student migration has been dropped.

For these reasons it is important that we update the 1983 Act and pass the 2021 Bill at the earliest, with norms regarding student migration as well.

“India has one of the largest migrant (including students) population, and is the largest remittance-receiving country, around $83 billion," says Sr Josephine Valarmathi from National Domestic Workers Welfare Trust in Chennai.

According to the MEA data, there are 32 million Indians, including persons of Indian origin, outside India. Unfortunately, we don't have the number of Indian students abroad.

On March 15, in a suo-moto statement in Parliament, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that “advisories are extremely unusual and their very issue is itself a serious caution.” He was responding to allegations that advisories issued by the government in Ukraine were “confusing”.

As per the March 15 statement, 22,500 Indians have returned home safely from Ukraine. Ninety evacuation flights, including 14 Indian Air Force flights, were deployed for the rescue mission.

Rejimon Kuttappan is a freelance journalist and author of Undocumented: Stories of Indian Migrants in the Arab Gulf. Twitter: rejitweets. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.