UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper 2 –Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.
Introduction
India’s overseas labour migration has expanded rapidly, driven by limited domestic opportunities and strong demand for low-skilled workers abroad. Millions of Indian workers migrate to the Gulf, Southeast Asia, and other regions, often facing unsafe recruitment, weak legal protection, and exploitation. The Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025 seeks to replace the Emigration Act, 1983, but raises concerns about whether facilitation is being prioritised over migrant welfare.
About Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025
The Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025 is proposed by the Ministry of External Affairs to replace the Emigration Act, 1983. It aims to establish a comprehensive framework for managing overseas employment of Indian nationals. The Bill focuses on safe and orderly migration while promoting overseas opportunities. It also seeks to ensure policy coordination and welfare-related actions across ministries.
Key Features
- Overseas Mobility and Welfare Council: The Bill proposes the establishment of an Overseas Mobility and Welfare Council. The council aims to ensure greater convergence among ministries involved in migration and overseas employment policy.
- Balancing opportunities and protection: The Bill seeks to strike a balance between promoting overseas opportunities and establishing a regulatory framework for protection and welfare of vulnerable categories.
- Oversight of international migration agreements: The Bill creates a mechanism to oversee the administration and implementation of international agreements on migration and mobility.
- Data-driven policy management: The Bill emphasises data-driven policymaking based on labour studies and coordinated actions across different ministries and departments.
Major Concerns Related to the Proposed Bill
- Weakening of enforceable migrant rights: The Bill removes provisions that allowed migrants to directly initiate legal action against exploitative recruiters or employers. This increases dependence on state authorities and weakens access to timely justice.
- Dilution of protections for women and children: Specific safeguards and higher penalties for crimes against women and children are replaced by a broad reference to “vulnerable classes.” This reduces legal clarity and weakens enforcement.
- Absence of a clear framework on human trafficking: The Bill remains silent on labour-related human trafficking despite high-risk migration corridors. This creates space for exploitation that can slide into modern-day slavery.
- Removal of recruitment fee transparency: Earlier requirements for transparent disclosure of recruitment fees are dropped. This exposes migrants to debt bondage before departure.
- Reduced accountability of recruitment agencies: Responsibilities such as post-arrival support, dispute resolution, and document renewal are no longer clearly imposed on recruitment agencies. These duties are shifted to government bodies that may be overburdened and under-resourced.
- Over-centralisation of migration governance: The Bill concentrates authority at the central level and sidelines state governments. States with high levels of overseas migration have no formal role in the Overseas Mobility and Welfare Council.
- Exclusion of civil society and trade unions: The Bill does not include trade unions, migrant organisations, or rights groups in decision-making bodies. This removes ground-level oversight and weakens feedback from affected communities.
- Surveillance risks linked to data systems: The Integrated Information System collects extensive migrant datawithout clear safeguards for consent and use. While monitoring increases, direct welfare benefits for migrants remain unclear.
- Neglect of illegal online recruitment: The Bill does not address fraudulent online recruitment through social media and messaging platforms. Migrants remain exposed to fake job offers and digital scams.
- Inadequate reintegration and return support: Reintegration measures such as skill training, counselling, and livelihood support are weakly addressed. Migrants deported or forced to return within 182 days are excluded from returnee benefits.
- Weak penalties for serious violations: Penalties mainly target recruitment agencies through fines. Traffickers, abusive foreign employers, and overseas exploiters remain largely outside the law’s effective reach.
Way Forward
- Restore migrant self-advocacy rights: Allow migrants to directly initiate legal proceedings against exploiters through a clear and time-bound process.
- Reinstate strict recruitment fee regulation: Make fee disclosure mandatory and enforce limits to prevent debt bondage and contract substitution.
- Define trafficking and address modern-day slavery: Explicitly define labour trafficking and link it to strong penalties and compensation mechanisms.
- Strengthen federal and participatory governance: Include migrant-sending states, trade unions, and civil society organisations in key decision-making bodies.
- Provide universal and funded reintegration support: Ensure skill training, counselling, and livelihood assistance for all returning migrants without restrictive cut-offs.
Conclusion
The Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025 prioritises administrative facilitation over worker protection. By weakening enforceable rights, centralising authority, and limiting accountability, it risks deepening migrant vulnerability. A rights-based framework with federal participation, clear action against trafficking, recruitment transparency, and assured reintegration support is necessary to protect the dignity, safety, and livelihoods of Indian labour migrants abroad.
Question for practice:
Examine how the Overseas Mobility (Facilitation and Welfare) Bill, 2025 may prioritise facilitation over migrant welfare, and discuss the key concerns and way forward.
Source: The Hindu
