I'm pleasantly surprised to see Rediff carry two news stories on NRKs (Non-Resident Keralites) today. Not least because, right until a few years back, I was one.

The first deals with a social security scheme offered by the Kerala Government for NRKs:

The Kerala government has announced a massive social security scheme for millions of Keralites working outside the state, including foreign countries... The scheme will be implemented in collaboration with the Life Insurance Corporation of India. This will not cause any financial burden to the cash-strapped government, Chief Minister A K Antony said.

The Kerala-based Centre for Development Studies, which has conducted exhaustive studies on various aspects of migration and condition of migrants from Kerala, is embarking on a larger study of Indian expatriates in Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative countries in West Asia... The study is considered significant, since the Indian stock in Saudi Arabia has been witnessing steady decline over the years. Although the all-India figures about returnees are not available, an earlier CDS study on Keralites showed that 40.83 per cent of migrants from the state had returned till 1998. The total number of Keralites in Saudi Arabia as per this study was 519,000 in the early nineties. Of this, 301,800 returned till 1998.

The volume of return from Saudi Arabia is the highest among the West Asian countries. The study found that the percentage of return from UAE was only 26.03. From Kuwait it was 4.71, Oman 12.48, Qatar 3.14 and Bahrain 5.95.