Emily Wax from Kochi in the Washington Post:
When his overnight flight landed, Abdul Wahib walked out of Kochi’s palm-fringed airport and hugged his family. After 24 years of working in the United Arab Emirates, he was home. He carried a suitcase and a layoff notice: His well-paid job as a forklift operator at Dubai’s once-bustling port was terminated.
Wahib’s airplane was filled with Indian laborers, some fired by text messages, dozens owed months of back pay.
“My flight was full of shocked men, sad men. I could think only of my wife and two children back in India,” said Wahib, 48, who had saved enough to buy a three-bedroom house in a sleepy hamlet of coconut groves and banana trees in the southern state of Kerala. “I didn’t want to disappoint them. India has become a strong nation. But it’s migrants’ money that has pumped through our banks and villages. I hoped I could find good work at home.” More:
From the Wall Street Journal:
India’s airlines, in a slump, are sending the following message to the cockpit: Foreign pilots, go home.
It’s an abrupt turnaround from the past several years, when Western pilots looked to growing markets like India as saviors for their profession. While carriers in the U.S. and Europe struggled with the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, India was opening its skies to new domestic carriers — and hiring hundreds of foreign pilots to fill the new planes with experienced fliers.
But in the past several months, India’s airline industry has contracted as the economic crisis has hit. Now, the industry is trying to cut costs. More:
[Chart: WSJ]
Reuters from Bangalore:
For decades, the United States beckoned as the land of opportunity for bright, young Indians, lured by the prospect of prestigious university degrees followed by jobs on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.
Indians have since 2001 been the largest foreign student population on American campuses, comprising around 15 percent of all international students at colleges and universities in the United States, according to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.
But now, the economic crisis that has sent the U.S. economy into its worst recession in decades, has tarnished the sheen of the ‘American Dream’ for many Indians who are opting for university studies and career opportunities at home.
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