Paradigm Shifts in India's Migration Policy Toward the Gulf
From fewer than 258,000 in 1975, the migrant Indian population in the Gulf rose to 3.318 million in 2001 and is now estimated at over four million. Indian migrant workers in the GCC countries belong to all three categories of labor: 1) professionals (e.g., doctors, nurses, engineers, architects, accountants, and managers), 2) semi-skilled workers (e.g., craftsmen, drivers, artisans, and other technical workers), and 3) unskilled laborers in construction sites, farmlands, livestock ranches, shops and stores, and households.