Small nations that built castles on the back of a boom in oil prices in recent years are on the back foot. Prices have tumbled as new energy sources have come up and global markets cooled down. Indians who went to work in the Gulf in large numbers are also at the receiving end of a resultant economic downturn in the Middle East.
As reports stated in the past two days, thousands of workers are out of job and starving in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. An SOS in the form of an individual’s video appeal has come to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, and the Indian government is reaching out to them with help. There are two opinions as to whether precious money of taxpayers should be spent for extending such support.
Governments generally intervene to help out citizens from areas or nations hit by war or natural calamities as humanitarian crises of immense proportions suddenly occur. In this case, however, people chose to go abroad, make money and were prepared to live a miserable life like large majority of Indians do overseas. These Indians in the Middle East lost their jobs and are now seeking governmental help for survival.
This is an altogether different scenario, in the sense that they would have made as much money at least to take care of themselves and should have been prepared for an eventuality like a loss of job. Job loss is not uncommon in the desert land where sands slip from under one’s feet so often and so easily. Here the question could be, what about those millions of jobless youth still rotting away in India.
There is a problem with the mindset of Indians. We are mostly jobseekers. Jobs imply assured salaries but in return we do not wish to work. In case we are compelled to go through the motions of working, then we put in half-hearted work for two to four hours a day. In the age of enterprise, success goes to those who take risks, fight odds and slog really hard.
However, with the present jobseekers’ mindset, India can only keep talking about super power status and will never achieve the goal. The servant mentality undercuts such aspirations. Enterprise enables a race to create work and opportunities for larger sections of people. For a nation to progress, every individual should show the courage and inclination to be on his own or her own, rather than depending on the governments for jobs, subsidies and free ration.
A servile and dependent attitude was alright during the colonial era. Citizens of Independent India need to look at life in a positive manner. Rather than expecting the government to always come to their help, enterprise as a characteristic should be practiced and encouraged from early life.
Government, no matter which political party forms it, will always fail because it cannot prop up an ever bulging population that is sitting pretty with a begging bowl in hand. In the case of the Gulf workers, who earn much better than their counterparts within the country, they should have the wherewithal to face an adverse situation.
This, however, is not to ignore or lessen the importance of the economic support that India gets from these overseas workers by way of their remittances swelling the nation’s foreign exchange reserves. But that does not match up anywhere close to the country’s internal reserves. At the same time, people who go abroad for work go on their own and do not register themselves with the government.
There is no proper system in this respect and the blame cannot fully be put on the government. When they are in trouble, they want help from the Indian government. How much a government should stretch itself in such cases is debatable.
The money that would be spent by way of such help, as in the case of Saudi now or elsewhere, is the precious taxpayers’ hard-earned money, which should rather be used to provide succour to the disadvantaged and underprivileged multitudes in this country. So, if the taxpayer raises his voice against such spending, it may sound cruel, but he cannot be faulted.
