Impact of non-resident Keralites remittances for Kerala economy and society

Abstract

A decade ago, the Centre for Development Studies started migration research based on large-scale field surveys covering the whole of Kerala state as a onetime study. However, this soon developed into an ongoing project called the Migration Monitoring Study (MMS), Kerala. This paper provides the results of the latest of these studies (the fourth in the series) carried out during the period August–December 2008. It provides the latest hard data on emigration, return emigration and remittances to Kerala. The number of emigrants from Kerala increased from 13.6 lakhs in 1998 to 18.4 lakhs in 2003, and to 21.9 lakhs in 2008. Simultaneously, the number of return emigrants increased from 7.4 lakhs in 1998 to 8.9 lakhs in 2003, and to 11.6 lakhs in 2008. As a result, the number of non-resident Keralites (NRKs) increased from 21.0 lakhs in 1998 to 27.3 lakhs in 2003, and to 33.5 lakhs in 2008. The proportion of emigrants from Kerala in the Gulf remained constant at 89 per cent in 2008 as in 2003. Emigration to the Gulf seems to have moved into a faster track in the year 2007–08. Remittances constituted as much as one-third (31 per cent) of Kerala’s National State Domestic Product (NSDP) in 2008.