Dunki, the third film of the year 2023 for King Khan, is a story of ordinary young people desperate to escape a jobless country at any cost to support their families in distress in rural India. It is a story of human endurance and vulnerability at the same time. Failing to get a student visa, with the dream of a fairy tale life abroad, three friends decide to pursue the illegal route – they endure harsh weather, vicious trigger-happy border control forces and shocking transport conditions, to reach London. It takes no time for reality to hit them. They meet their friend on student visa on the street begging by day and hiding in a room with several others evading police raids by night. As the four friends begin unraveling the unfair rules of obtaining citizenship rights, they end up being arrested and brought before a court. The judge offers to provide them asylum if they claim that their lives are at risk in their home country. Hardy (played by Shahrukh Khan), the patriotic army jawan, refuses and is ordered to be deported back to India. The other three tearfully admit that they will die (translated as lives at risk) if they return home. Hardy hopes Mannu (played by Tapsi Pannu), his love, will choose deportation with him but she stays on to pursue the commitment to earn a living for her family. Unlike hypermasculine heroes we are used to, Hardy does not fight to win her – he empathises with her dilemma and leaves without a word. The three friends settle in working lowly manual jobs under humiliating conditions every day to provide a life of relative comfort for their families back home.
This is the closest to a real story of the largest number of immigrants that leave their countries in search of work every day. They are not pulled by ambition to live a better life, but pushed away by need to provide a decent life for their families at the cost of their own.
- According to the UN ‘International Migration 2020 Highlights’, the UAE, the US and Saudi Arabia host the largest number of migrants from India. Indians now make up the third largest population of illegal immigrants in the US, according to a 2023 study. There are around 725,000 Indians currently living illegally in the US and the actual figure is likely to be more.
- A record 96,917 Indians were caught or expelled in the year 2022-23 trying to cross into the United States, up from 30,662 in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. At least 41,770 of those Indians attempted to enter the US via the Mexican land border.
- Despite the notoriously inhuman working and living conditions, there has been a 50 percent increase in the migration of manual workers from India to the 6 Gulf countries in the first seven months of 2023 with large number of workers Kerala being replaced by workers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
One Indian worker was killed and two injured when an anti-tank missile struck an orchard in northern Israel early this month. Israel had started issuing visas to Indians for employment in the construction and agriculture sectors in November 2023. About 800 Indians migrated by December to work in the agricultural farms. An agri visa typically costs around Rs. 4 lakh, including the fees that agents and recruitment agencies charge. Most of those who travelled to Israel were from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh.
Every year 25 lakh Indians migrate abroad, which is the highest annual number of migrants in the world. India also tops the list of remittance recipient countries in the world, with a total of $125 billion sent by Indians living in different parts of the world to their families in India. India, also now the world’s most populous country with a population of 1.4 billion, has an urban unemployment rate of 8.5 percent and rural unemployment rate of 7.8 per cent, according to the recent report. In the last quarter of 2023, joblessness among those in the age group of 20 to 29 grew to almost 59%. The jobs crisis magnifies manifold when we add to this the number of people forced to be self-employed and the number of people in disguised unemployment due to lack of jobs. The crisis is so severe that even war does not faze the people struggling to find a job.
At least two Indian men have been killed on the Ukrainian front lines, fighting for Russia. One of the two men killed was offered a job as a helper in the Russian army at a monthly salary of $1,800. They did not sign up for combat duty. He and his son took a loan to pay a commission of $3,600 (approximately Rs. 3 lakh) to the recruiting agency to get this job and within 2 months one of them had been killed in a missile attack.
Leave a Reply