As the geopolitical conflict intensifies across West Asia, India’s concerns extend beyond foreign policy balancing, energy and essential goods imports, trade, and the safety of Indian seafarers aboard merchant ships navigating Gulf maritime routes. Indians constitute one of the world’s largest migrant populations, and the country is the top global recipient of remittances, with the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries hosting the largest concentration of its migrants, estimated at around 10 million. Smaller yet significant overseas Indian populations are estimated at around 10,765 in Iran and approximately 1,23,000 in Israel as of January 2025.

At least six Indians have lost their lives in the ongoing conflict, several others have been injured, and more than 3,75,000 have returned to India since the Israel-Iran war began on February 28. This highlights the profound human cost of regional tensions, with their livelihoods at a heightened risk of disruption, uncertainty, and distress. Over the past decade, GCC states have increasingly prioritised economic diversification strategies beyond oil and gas, contingent on perceptions of regional stability and investor confidence. This has, in turn, diversified the migrant profile, with increasing numbers of Indians moving to the Gulf for jobs in tourism, finance, logistics, and technology, alongside traditional blue-collar employment.

While workers in construction, retail, and hospitality are especially vulnerable to the slowdown, Indian migrant entrepreneurs—particularly those running small and medium ventures in tourism hubs such as Dubai—face a parallel squeeze. Flight disruptions and airspace closures have choked tourism flows, leaving them with cash-flow stress, falling revenues, and rising uncertainty.

Recurrent episodes of overt and covert conflict, coupled with persistent regional instability and geopolitical insecurity, have also dampened confidence among aspiring Indian expatriates to invest, leading to delayed entrepreneurial decisions or, in some cases, the abandonment of business or home purchase plans amid financial risk. Furthermore, the GCC region accounts for a substantial share of India’s remittance inflows, and any reduction in economic activity, labour demand, or wage stability in the region is likely to negatively affect remittances, which, in turn, will affect the welfare of migrant households.

Table 1: Indians residing in GCC countries

Source: Ministry of External Affairs. These are estimated numbers.

If conflict conditions escalate further, existing safety frameworks may inadequately prioritise vulnerable migrant groups, leaving particularly those without secure legal status or institutional support to navigate crises on their own. Such a situation will also marginalise informal and semi-formal workers within already precarious and exclusionary labour and protection regimes, such as the kafala system, thereby constraining labour mobility and limiting access to social protection, severance benefits, and crisis compensation.

Labour camps may experience supply constraints, tighter mobility restrictions, and limited access to timely, reliable information, often compounded by language barriers and the digital divide, which hinder migrants’ ability to make informed decisions during emergencies. In parallel, sudden job loss or wage delays, as witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, could also trigger debt distress, with cascading effects on families back home. Women migrants, particularly in domestic and care work, may face heightened isolation and invisibility, with limited access to institutional support or evacuation mechanisms.

The illusion of preparedness

The Indian government’s high-level diplomatic engagement with the Gulf states underscores the criticality of government-to-government (G2G) cooperation in crisis management. The strategic use of bilateral channels to secure political assurances on the safety of Indian nationals and medical assistance for the injured, combined with the activation of a multi-layered consular and institutional support framework at the operational level, certainly signals India’s capacity for emergency response.

Indian missions in affected countries are functioning as critical nodes of assistance, issuing advisories, coordinating the early repatriation of the deceased, and maintaining 24/7 control rooms and helplines that have greatly facilitated the dissemination of real-time information, especially via digital media, among migrants and tourists. Parallel measures, such as the partial cancellation of CBSE examinations in Gulf-based schools, point to a broader recognition of the socio-economic and educational disruptions caused by the crisis. In an effort to address immediate humanitarian needs, over 3,75,000 individuals were repatriated, including around 1,000 from Iran, of whom over 700 are medical students.

However, despite the Indian government’s logistical capabilities and responsiveness aimed at safeguarding its nationals in the Gulf, the approach remains predominantly reactive, responding to unfolding events rather than being anchored in anticipatory, proactive migration frameworks or systemic preparedness. As seen during earlier crises, the reactive approach can often lead to delays and exclusion of migrants in irregular situations, those without access to digital tools, and women in domestic work.

Table 2: Indians residing in West Asia (non-GCC)

Source: Ministry of External Affairs

India’s complex evacuation efforts during earlier crises, such as the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the Iraq conflict of 2014, the Yemen crisis of 2015, and the COVID-19 pandemic, have been celebrated as diplomatic and logistical wins, as well as its ability to mobilise resources at scale. Yet, in the absence of robust baseline emigration data, these operations were planned and executed based on estimates rather than precise information, reflecting the lack of reliable, granular, and integrated emigration data systems. While the eMigrate system primarily captures the ECR (Emigration Check Required) category, it leaves out those in higher-skilled categories or those who migrate through informal or semi-formal channels.

The fallacy of cooperative federalism

The data problem is closely linked to institutional fragmentation and weak Centre-State coordination. There is limited coordination across levels and actors in India’s migration governance; hence, data systems are unintegrated and compartmentalised.

Besides, migration from India is regionalised, with States such as Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana leading in outmigration. However, there is significant variation in how States collect, maintain, and utilise migration data. While some States can act swiftly and strategically, others are forced to adopt reactive, short-term measures, often relying on centralised schemes that may not suit local realities. Data sharing with State governments is often poorly streamlined and, if at all, only partial, which hampers effective rescue and relief coordination. As a result, State-level agencies, such as NORKA (Non-Resident Keralites Affairs), often rely on ad hoc registration portals and self-reporting mechanisms to identify and assist their migrant populations.

Kerala has relatively better data on emigration, covering skill levels, remittances, household dependencies, and returnees than other Indian States, drawn from nine rounds of the Kerala Migration Surveys (KMS) since 1998 and from the institutional architecture built around NORKA. This data infrastructure proved invaluable during the pandemic, as the State was able to anticipate return flows, design targeted quarantine and rehabilitation measures, and initiate welfare schemes for returnees.

The State’s preparedness was not incidental, but it was the result of data availability, institutional architecture, and political commitment. This is not the case with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, or other major “sending States” in India. Furthermore, the limited public accessibility of existing central government data means that researchers and civil society organisations working with migrants often lack comprehensive, real-time data on emigration.

Table 3: Remittance to India from GCC (FY23-24

Source: RBI Data & ET Research

Data inadequacy also has significant gender implications. Women migrants and returnees are often underrepresented in official datasets, and this invisibility can translate into heightened risk in rapidly evolving crisis contexts.

Most crisis response policies are gender-blind in impact, failing to address specific vulnerabilities faced by women migrants in the Gulf and elsewhere, especially at a time when protection mechanisms break down during conflict. Absence of gender-disaggregated data results in exclusion from evacuation and rescue efforts if the authorities cannot identify, locate, or prioritise women migrants, especially those working in private households. Gendered underreporting could also reduce their access to embassy and consular assistance, helplines, language-appropriate advisories, welfare schemes during crises, and upon return to India.

Post-return vulnerabilities and the mirage of reintegration

Evacuation of migrants, while critical, is, in fact, only a temporary crisis solution in the long process of migrant return and reintegration into the home country. The data deficit has profound implications not only for evacuation efforts, as mentioned, but also for the reintegration of returnees. The disconnect between data gathered by the central government and embassies during evacuation operations and the information available to State governments responsible for migrant reintegration can lead to significant challenges in designing effective reintegration strategies, delays in service delivery and exclusion of vulnerable groups. After all, large-scale return migration, as seen in previous crises, places pressure on State-level reintegration systems, which are often structurally constrained, under-resourced, and grossly unprepared. Reintegration thus remains one of the weakest links in India’s migration governance framework.

Particularly in crisis situations, migrants’ return is unplanned and abrupt, with limited savings and uncertain futures. At home, they encounter limited productive employment opportunities and barriers to access skill development programmes, credit, and social protection. In the absence of viable alternatives, many re-migrate to similar or even more precarious economies. Likewise, women returnees encounter additional obstacles to reintegration, including social stigma and exclusion from entrepreneurship and psychosocial support systems, also because they may not be captured in reintegration databases. In data-deficient States, there will be no systematic tracking of reintegration outcomes or of intervention effectiveness, and no feedback loops to inform future policy design. This not only undermines reintegration but also perpetuates cycles of vulnerability and distress migration.

Towards proactive, evidence-based migration governance

As the Gulf region navigates a period of heightened uncertainty, the stakes for India are high, and any major disruptions will have far-reaching economic and social consequences. However, the current crisis offers yet another opportunity to recalibrate India’s migration governance framework towards greater proactivity by making reliable and dynamic data a core foundation. Without evidence-driven planning and policies, even the most well-intentioned interventions can fall short. India must therefore prioritise building robust, integrated, inclusive, and publicly accessible data systems with embedded data privacy and security, and supported by strong, dedicated institutional mechanisms to align data and policy designs.

Table 4: Indians returned from the Gulf during Covid-19 (till 15 September 2020)

Source: Ministry of External Affairs, 2020

Regular, State-level, large-scale household surveys, such as the KMS, conducted in collaboration with academic and research institutions, can effectively capture migration trends and dynamics. The Kerala Model of Migration Surveys has been replicated in several States such as Gujarat, Punjab, Goa, and Tamil Nadu and in recent times, Odisha, and Jharkhand. At the same time, it is imperative to strengthen coordination between Central and State agencies for data sharing and to enable timelier, evidence-based policy responses and targeted welfare interventions across the migrant lifecycle. Early warning mechanisms need to be established to monitor geopolitical developments and anticipate and assess potential risks to migrant populations. A gender-responsive data framework is also essential to ensure inclusive evacuation and reintegration pathways that address the specific needs of women migrants and returnees.

At the same time, sustainable reintegration must be prioritised as a central component of emigration policy, rather than an afterthought. Effective reintegration requires granular, disaggregated information on the skills, work experience, gender, and aspirations of returnees, as well as an appraisal of local labour market conditions. Without such data, policy responses tend to be generic and poorly targeted. Fundamentally, data blind spots and reintegration gaps are structural weaknesses undermining the resilience of India’s migration system. Addressing them requires a fundamental shift in approach, from short-term, reactive crisis responses to long-term, evidence-based, proactive strategies.

The question is no longer whether another crisis will emerge in West Asia, but when. The recurring, unpredictable conflicts in the region also underscore this paradigm shift, given the sheer number of Indians in the Gulf and India’s strategic foreign-policy interests there. Rather than treating each crisis as an isolated event, India must adopt an anticipatory approach to protect its citizens abroad and support their reintegration at home on return. Ultimately, India’s Gulf migrants deserve more than emergency rescue; they deserve a robust governance framework that recognises their contributions, anticipates their vulnerabilities, and secures their futures.

S. Irudaya Rajan is the Chair, International Institute of Migration and Development (IIMAD), Thiruvananthapuram, and Divya Balan teaches Migration Studies at FLAME University, Pune.

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