‘Data Not Available’. How India abandons its workers abroad

In the quiet village of Madapur in Telangana's Nirmal district, Mundla Rajanna's name evokes a blend of hope and despair. The 59-year-old migrant worker left for Dubai nearly 18 years ago, pursuing the promise of dignified employment that lures millions of Indians to the Arab Gulf states. Three months ago, his undocumented status led to a devastating turn: during a routine police check in Abu Dhabi, he was arrested and jailed because he could not prove his Indian citizenship.

Later, when his family sought help from the Indian embassy, they learned that an emergency repatriation certificate required proper documentary proof. Rajanna lacked essential documents like a voter ID, ration card, Aadhaar card, or even a passport copy — none of which met the Indian State's requirements for verifying identity.

Desperate, they turned to the Telangana government's Pravasi Prajavani programme, submitting the only items available: a bank passbook, an LIC policy, and a faded group photo. Rajanna remains jailed — not for any crime, but trapped in bureaucratic limbo. His family, social workers, and officials express hope for his imminent release, yet his ordeal signals a deeper systemic issue.

On December 18, the Indian government informed Parliament that thousands of Indian nationals continue to be detained and deported abroad, predominantly from the Arab Gulf. In the same breath, it admitted that it does not possess complete or reliable data on arrests, detentions, or even the conditions under which Indian citizens are held. This is not a clerical oversight. It is a structural failure of governance.

Stripped of diplomatic language, the Rajya Sabha reply reveals a deeply unequal migration regime — one that exports labour, tracks remittances obsessively, but retreats the moment workers fall into distress. The Indian State knows how much money migrants send home. It does not know how many of them are in jail.

The data that are available point clearly to the Arab Gulf as the epicentre of this crisis. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Oman — cornerstones of India’s overseas employment strategy — account for some of the highest deportation figures. Saudi Arabia alone exposes the scale of institutional neglect. Deportations from Riyadh surged into five figures, peaking at 11,486 in a single year, while Jeddah recorded over 6,000 deportations in another. These are not isolated enforcement actions; they are mass expulsions, repeated year after year, involving workers who entered through India’s emigration clearance system and bilateral labour arrangements.

The UAE shows a similar pattern. Deportations rose steadily from 358 to 1,469 within four years. Yet detention data remains entirely absent. Bahrain reported 784, 857, and 764 deportations in successive years; again with no detention figures disclosed. Oman, often portrayed as a relatively ‘safe’ destination, still recorded 50 to 57 deportations annually. These numbers are not abstract statistics. They represent workers who were recruited, documented, and dispatched by the Indian State — only to be detained, criminalised, or expelled without meaningful protection.

The most politically revealing phrase in the government’s reply is not any single number, but the repeated disclaimer: ‘Data not available’. For key Gulf missions, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain, the Indian government admits it does not know how many of its citizens are detained unless host governments request nationality verification for deportation. In effect, India begins to ‘know’ about its detained citizens only when they are about to be expelled.

This has devastating consequences: no independent monitoring of detention conditions, no early legal intervention, no systematic consular access, and no accountability. In one of the world’s most exploitative labour corridors, ignorance is not accidental — it is institutionalised.

The government attributes detentions to overstaying, visa violations, working without permits, or ‘absconding from employers’. These explanations are administratively convenient and politically evasive, erasing flaws in Gulf labour regimes: kafala-linked dependency binding legal status to employers; contract substitution that turns workers ‘illegal’ overnight; passport confiscation that criminalises escape from abuse; and wage theft and confinement that drive irregularity as a survival strategy.

By listing violations without context, the Indian State criminalises its own migrant workers while shielding recruitment systems, employers, and bilateral labour agreements from scrutiny.

The ministry identifies 3,505 unregistered agents on the e-migrate portal, yet Gulf deportations continue unabated. If these agents are known, why do workers still route through them? Where are the prosecutions for filed complaints? Blacklisting isn't regulation; advisories aren't deterrence. Portals and helplines fail to dismantle recruitment economies sustained by political patronage and impunity at the source.

The government claims to raise migrant issues at the ‘political level’ with host countries, but data exposes this as hollow. Effective diplomacy would reduce deportations, improve detention transparency, and expand legal access — none of which is evident. Instead, deportations rise, data disappear, and emergency certificates become routine tools rather than last-resort measures. What passes for diplomacy is, in effect, acquiescence.

Taken together, the government’s reply exposes a migration governance model focused on managing departures and returns, not protecting citizens. Workers are exported via weak regulation, abuse, and illegality normalised abroad, with deportation as the State's endpoint.

Until India demands detention data as a diplomatic non-negotiable, prosecutes recruitment fraud at source, and reframes ‘illegal migration’ as governance failure rather than migrant fault, Parliament will get the same evasive answers.

Until then, workers like Mundla Rajanna will keep waiting — in foreign jails, without papers, protection, or a state to claim them.

Rejimon Kuttappan is a migrant rights activist, and author of Undocumented. X: @rejitweets.