Indians leaving Fiji due to economic, political woes: expert

More and more people of Indian- origin are leaving Fiji over gloomy political and uncertain economic environments, an expert on the pacific nation said here today.

Indian indentured labourers, who had arrived in Fiji over a century ago to work in sugar cane sector, were emotionally uprooted and leaving the island-state, said Brij Lal, professor of Pacific and Asian History at the Australian National University.

These Fijians of Indian-origin were part of the over one million indentured labourers that went to the "King Sugar" colonies across the global between 1830 and 1920, he told a conference on 'The Narrative of Indian Communities in Singapore and Southeast Asia'.

Speaking to PTI after the conference, Lal said political situation was not likely to change from the present military- led government which has issued unchallengeable decrees since 2009.

The next general election, due by September 2014, would not see much change either as the military-led regime would not accept any dramatic change in government through the ballot box.

While the professionals and highly qualified people of Indian-origin have migrated to Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada, the unskilled labourers were being marginalised.

The leases of their once lucrative sugar farms have expired and the labourers were moving out to squatters outside the towns.

There were no prospects in the farm sector with no fresh investment being made in the national economy due to political uncertainties, he added.

According to Lal, people of Indian-origin accounted for 50 per cent of Fiji population up to 1987. This was now down to 32 per cent or about 350,000 out of the total 850,000 population.

The number of Indians in Fiji was further declining, he added. More than 100,000 of the Indian-origin Fijians have migrated to Australia and New Zealand and another 80,000 to the United States and Canada.

The Indian business community in Fiji was staying on in the Pacific Nation but they had already re-settled family members abroad.

Nearly half the population now lives below poverty line in Fiji, he cited the World Bank figures, and pointed out most desperately poors among them were unskilled labourers, dencendents of the old Indian migrants.

Something like 15 per cent to 20 per cent of the Fiji populations live in squatters, and most of them were of Indian origins, he said.

While the "Brain Drain" of Fiji's brilliant Indians continues, the unskilled were left to struggle in Pacific island state, said Prof Lal in his observation of the Fiji Indians.

Some were hoping their relatives who have settled abroad would help them find a way out of Fiji. The conference, held September 20-21, was organised by the Indian Heritage Centre in Singapore.