The news of the horrific death in Italy of Satnam Singh, abandoned with a severed arm while employed under a gangmaster system, has reached his home village in Punjab, an Indian state second only to Kerala in terms of emigration. What until the 1980s was the country's agricultural bread basket now offers few job opportunities to young people, who follow two paths: the most educated go to Canada, the unskilled travel to the Persian Gulf and Europe.

Chandigarh (AsiaNews) – The news of the death of Satnam Singh, a 31-year-old farm worker left to die by his employer, the owner of a farm in the province of Latina, Italy, has reached his home village in the Indian state of Punjab.

Satnam Singh died in hospital on 19 June two days after he had lost an arm that got stuck in a machine. His employer, instead of calling for help, put Singh and his wife (also working illegally on the farm) into a van and left them in front of their home, with the severed arm in a fruit box.

Harpreet Singh, the sarpanch (village chief) in Satnam’s home village of Chand Nawa, told the America Wire, an Indian news website, that the news was a blow to the entire community.

“As there are many boys from our village in Italy, they shared the details of the horrific accident and informed Satnam’s parents about his death gradually. It was difficult to break this news to his parents, who were inconsolable and have been hospitalised since then. They were not even in a condition to talk to someone,” he said.

He added that Satnam came from a Dalit community (formerly known as untouchables, who live in conditions of great economic and social deprivation in India) and that his family's financial conditions were not good, which is why he emigrated.

Satnam is not alone. Punjab, where Sikhism was born, is traditionally a state with high emigration, currently second only to Kerala.

In Talhan, Jalandhar district, a gurdwara (Sikh temple) is dedicated to foreign travel – the faithful bring toy airplanes as gifts hoping that their wish to leave will come true.

At store entrances, airplane replicas sporting the logo of the main international airliners are on display for sale. After they are offered at the temple, they are usually handed out to neighbourhood children.

The most recent study on emigration from Punjab, by the Punjab Agricultural University, looked at the period 1990-2022, showing that 74 per cent of emigrants left the state after 2016.

More than 13 per cent of households in rural areas said they had at least one relative abroad, but in the districts of Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, and Ferozepur, that figure tops 30 per cent.

Several reasons explain this, but the main one, cited by three-quarters of households, is unemployment and inadequate incomes.

Another study reported the same in 2021, indicating that young Punjabis are the most dissatisfied in all of India over job opportunities. Only 2 per cent described the opportunities offered by the labour market as "good", compared to 15 per cent of the national average.

Until the 1980s, Punjab was considered India’s “granary” or “bread basket”, the state with the highest per capita income. A decade later it was the main "exporter" of migrants through irregular channels. How did this happen?

According to various studies, the adoption of neoliberal policies, accompanied by cuts in public spending on education, deprived younger generations of opportunities to study and undergo training, making it impossible for them to seek employment in the public sector or in large companies.

At the same time, the share of workers engaged in the agricultural sector dropped from 62 per cent in 1971 to 36 per cent in 2011. No more up-to-date data are available since no census was held in 2021, but it is likely that the percentage has gone down further in recent years.

Yet, Punjab continues to be a rural state: 62 per cent of the population live in the countryside, compared to 37.5 per cent in cities. This generates a big difference in migration flows.

Educated young people from the cities choose Canada as their preferred emigration destination, through a work visa or, much more often, to study.

According to Canada’s latest census (2021), Punjabis in the North American country number around 950,000 or 2.6 per cent of the population.

Meanwhile, data from the Union Ministry of Education from 2021-2022 show a drop of 100,000 Punjabi students in five years.

“The shift is definitely there from rural to urban, from agrarian communities to business communities, from those seeking employment to those already well off with established businesses," said Kuljeet Singh Hayer, president of Punjab Travel Agents Association.

“The trend of remittances from abroad by the NRIs has reversed to a massive flight of finances from the state to other countries, and it would impact the economy of Punjab very severely in the coming years,” Hayer added.

However, those who leave – often via illegal paths along the routes of traffickers – are mainly peasants and labourers from the lower castes, often landless.

For them, the destination of choice is the United Arab Emirates, where Indians number almost four million (38 per cent of the population), employed mainly in construction and transport sectors.

Punjabi migration to Europe is more complicated. Until last year, most of those who wanted to reach Europe from Punjab could pass through Serbia, which was visa-free for Indians. Once in the Balkan country, they could cross into any Schengen area member countries.

In fact, about 130,000 Indians arrived in Serbia in the first 10 months of 2022, prompting the country’s authorities to impose a visa. In other cases, Russia has been named as a point of entry with Belarus and Kazakhstan as transit countries.

Conversely, those who try to get to the United States use the so-called “donkey routes”, which has noting to do with the domesticated equine, but refers to a Punjabi word, dunki, which means to hop, skip or jump from one place to another.

In this case, migrants rely on smugglers who organise flights from one country to another (from Asia to Latin America or Europe) so that visa stamps appear on passports and migrants can pass as experienced tourists.

However, last December, more than 300 Indians who had left the United Arab Emirates bound for Nicaragua (en route to the United States) were repatriated from France, where the plane had stopped to refuel.

• india
• punjab
• kerala
• migrants
• europe
• italy
• gangmaster system
• exploitation
• donkey routes
• canada
• united states
• latin america