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K.C. Zachariah is currently Honorary Professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He was a senior demographer at the World Bank (1971-1987). He has worked extensively on migration, and has coordinated six large-scale migration surveys in Kerala along with Professor S. Irudaya Rajan.
How many Indians work abroad? We have no answer to this question even today. However, available evidence indicates that the state of Kerala in India has the highest number of emigrants in the Gulf countries.1
The money that migrants send home is important not only to their families but also to their country’s balance of payments. In many developing countries, remittances represent a significant proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as well as foreign exchange earning.
