By Sanu George, IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : A study on non-resident Keralites shows that the Muslim community in Kerala continues to lead the pack of emigrants from the state when it comes to remittances from abroad but has the lowest number of women expatriates.
These results have come out in the third round of the Migration Monitoring Studies (MMS) being conducted by the Research Unit on International Migration of the Centre for Development Studies (CDSMRU). The Department of Non-Resident Keralite Affairs of the Kerala government is financing the studies.
MMS 2007, conducted during April-September 2007, was the third in this series. The first one, called the Kerala Migration Study (KMS), was conducted in 1998. The second one was conducted five years later in 2003.
The studies have shown that the non-resident Keralite population rose from 1.36 million in 1998 to 1.84 million in 2003 and grew a shade to touch 1.85 million in the latest study.
According to S. Irudayarajan of the CDSMRU, Kerala received about Rs.240 billion in remittances in 2006-07, which is about 20 percent of the state’s net state domestic product and 30 percent more than the state’s annual receipts.
The study found that the Muslim community, which forms nearly 25 percent of the state’s 32 million population, received 50 percent of the total remittances during 2006-07.
“About Rs.120 billion in the remittances to the state were received by the Muslim community while Hindus who constitute the majority of the population received only about Rs.80 billion. Christians received about Rs.30 billion,” Irudayarajan told IANS.
The total number of non-resident Keralites in 2007 was 1.84 million. Among them, 883,000 (48.2 percent) were Muslims, 617,000 (33.3 percent) were Hindus and 347,000 (18.5 percent) were Christians.
However, Muslims have taken a back seat with regard to the number of women non-resident Keralites.
“Christians have the highest proportion of females with 28.40 percent, followed by Hindus with 16 percent and Muslims come third with a mere eight percent,” said Irudayarajan.
For all religious groups taken together, 89 percent of the emigrants went to the Middle East countries, but among Muslims almost all (98 percent) went to Gulf countries.
About 14 percent Christians and 8.7 percent Hindus went to the US, but only 0.2 percent of Muslims chose to go to that country.