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When India last May agreed to send more than 40,000 of its citizens to work in Israel, it obviously had no inkling that just months later a war would erupt between Israel and the Gaza-based Hamas.
But the Modi administration’s subsequent decision to honor that deal and perhaps send tens of thousands more Indian workers to a country deep in armed conflict has rankled Indian labor rights groups and unions. They say that not only does the move prove the government’s continued inability to improve the economy so that Indians would not have to go overseas for work, it also shows its utter disregard for the safety of its citizens.
India has had a jobs crisis for years, which helps explain why thousands have been lining up to apply for work in Israel despite its ongoing war with Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack on a music festival and Israeli kibbutzes had sparked the conflict.
But rights activists and labor unions say that the government has yet to explain why it is allowing Indian workers to go to a conflict zone at all, and even without the protection mandated by law.
An insider with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which monitors worker migration, says the current India-Israel recruitment drive done by the quasi-government National Skill Development Centre (NSDC), floating an international company, is a farce.
“In labor migration, especially for low-skilled workers, eMigrate must be followed,” says the MEA insider. “Here, NSDC is bypassing all safe, regular, and orderly norms, and recruiting workers to a war zone. This is unacceptable. The workers recruited through NSDC won’t even get the mandatory insurance scheme listed in eMigrate.”
“In the coming days, they (workers) will be forced to pay huge amounts to get the job,” the insider continues, referring to the expenses successful applicants are obligated to make. “And eventually they will be pushed into a war zone, bypassing all safety nets and the ‘go safe, go trained’ (policy) set here in labor migration by the late Indian central minister Sushama Swaraj.”
NSDC is a public-private partnership company set up in 2008 under India’s Ministry of Finance through the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship. The Indian government holds 49 percent of the company’s shares while 51 percent is held by private firms.
The eMigrate system meanwhile has been described by the Migrants in Countries in Crisis Initiative (MICIC) as a “transformative initiative by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.” Put in place in 2014, eMigrate aims to protect Indians working abroad through various ways, among them the imposition of mandatory insurance and monitoring by Indian embassies and consulates in labor-destination countries.
Enrolling in eMigrate, however, is mandatory only for workers who are headed for countries on the Emigration Check Required (ECR) list, which are those with security risks or have problematic labor laws. Israel, despite its current war with Hamas, has yet to be included among these countries.
But even without this criterion, there is nothing to stop the Indian government should it want to implement eMigrate on Israel-bound Indian workers.
A major labor exporter
India is among the world’s top labor-exporting countries, with some 15 million of its citizens working abroad as of December 2023, according to official data.
The top five recipients of Indian labor are all in the Middle East: the United Arab Emirates (3.5 million), Saudi Arabia (2.2 million), Kuwait (0.82 million), Qatar (0.8 million), and Oman (0.53 million).
In Israel, an Indian Embassy note in February 2023 said that there were about 18,000 Indian citizens there at the time, including students and those working as caregivers for the elderly, diamond traders, and I.T. professionals. While there were plans to repatriate those wanting to go back home after the Oct. 7 attack, it is unclear if these pushed through or if any Indian worker chose to leave Israel.
The plan to bring Indian workers to Israel, however, was expedited in November 2023, a month after the Hamas attack. By December 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was even calling up Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with whom he discussed “advancing the arrival of foreign workers from India to the State of Israel.”
More than 28,000 people have reportedly been killed in the Israel-Hamas war as of mid-February, most of them Gazans. In response to queries about the India-Israel labor deal, MEA said in parliament last Feb. 9: “Government accords the highest priority to the safety, security, and well-being of Indian nationals abroad, including Indian workers. As per the Framework Agreement and Implementation Protocols signed with Israel, Indian workers shall enjoy equal treatment with respect to labor rights as Israeli citizens and shall be provided with proper lodging, medical insurance, and relevant social security coverage, as well as wages and benefits as set out in law.”
But the experiences so far of workers from other countries have not been reassuring. Just last January, Moldova accused Israelis of wartime abuse of construction workers and suspended its labor deal with Tel Aviv.
There are around 4,000 Moldovans working in Israel. But Moldova has halted efforts to send construction workers to Israel, following allegations that Israeli employers placed Moldovans in high-risk conflict zones as the war raged in Gaza, withheld their passports, and engaged in other abusive practices.
Four Filipino caregivers were also killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, prompting many Filipino workers to leave Israel.
Israeli laws followed, Indian laws flouted
The labor deal struck by India and Israel in May 2023 was for 34,000 construction workers and 8,000 nurses. Because of the current conflict, however, Israel has lost most of its Palestinian construction workforce and is now reportedly looking to recruit as much as 100,000 laborers from India. Monthly salaries for the construction jobs are as much as US$1,600, or more than six times that for similar work in India.
Ashok (not his real name) is among the thousands who have already applied for construction work in Israel.
“I lost my job in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) during the COVID-19 outbreak and farming back in the village wasn’t profitable,” he tells Asia Democracy Chronicles. “With a joint family of 20 and many expenses, finding enough work in Gorakhpur (a city in Uttar Pradesh) was tough. Migration seemed like the only option. Israel offers good salaries, so I’m giving it a shot.”
Yet before he gets to work in Israel, Ashok must first pay the equivalent of US$1,000 to “the Indian company” that recruited him, plus foot the airfare from India to Israel, as stipulated in documents all the applicants are made to sign.
India has thousands of labor-recruitment agencies, but under the current arrangement with Israel, it is NSDC International, an NSDC subsidiary, that is the sole recruiter. The US$1,000 for the “Indian Company” is an Israeli stipulation in accordance with its own laws.
Indian laws, however, put a cap equivalent to US$360 as fee to be paid to labor recruiters.
Rafeek Ravuther, executive director of the Centre for Indian Migrant Studies, expressed shock at the recruitment fee that is among the details in the documents given to applicants, calling it a blatant violation of India’s labor-migration laws.
“Under the Indian Emigration Act 1983, recruiting agents can’t charge prospective emigrants more than INR 30,000 (US$360) plus taxes,” Ravuther says. “But in this case, Israeli authorities are demanding US$1,000, and workers will also have to pay US$700 for airfare.” Then there’s also “the issue of middlemen,” he says. “This entire situation is illegal.”
Perhaps, though, the US$1,000 is not so much a “demand” from Israel as a recognition by its officials that Indian recruiters usually ignore the US$360 legal maximum fee and instead charge exorbitant sums, especially for jobs that have high salaries.
Indeed, the documents that applicants are made to sign to secure jobs in Israel stipulate that aside from the US$1,000, they “did not pay any other recruitment fee to any source in Israel or in my country of origin in order to arrive in Israel.”
But such wording excludes the “middlemen” who hound Indian migrant workers, particularly those seeking overseas work. Ashok says he did not have to go through any middleman, but admits that other applicants had paid between US$150 and US$200 to reach a recruitment center in the Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow and “ensure” getting a job in Israel.
While NSDC International acts as the recruitment agent for employment in Israel, local governments are in reality the ones carrying out the recruitment drives. Uttar Pradesh had its India-Israel labor migration recruitment drive from Jan. 22 to 30 and the Haryana government from Jan. 16 to 21.
Despite the process being handled by local governments, middlemen continue to offer their services and are apparently tolerated by authorities.
Amit Kumar Mishra, a Lucknow-based labor activist who visited the recruitment center there, confirms that middlemen were present in the scene. “Everyone is exploiting the poor worker who is trying to migrate for a better future,” he says. ◉