Saudi Arabia Squeezes a Lifeline in India

The government of Saudi Arabia's recent push to get businesses in the country to employ more Saudi citizens has sent tremors through the thriving "remittance economy" of the small south Indian state of Kerala. It also has caused a small wave of what might be called distress migration from Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi regime's recent enforcement of its Nitaqat program, a policy that promotes the employment of its own nationals in response to a rising domestic unemployment rate that now stands at 12 percent, seems likely to have a ripple effect on lives across Southeast Asia. It is being most closely watched in Kerala, a sylvan state low on India's west coast with a long history of links to migration, multiculturalism and maritime trade. (Vasco da Gama, seeking to discover the sea route to India from Europe, landed there in 1498.)