Narendra Modi’s visit to the UAE, the first to the West Asian nation by an Indian Prime Minister in 34 years, is a trip with as much a domestic constituency in mind as it is with bilateral relations. In no other place does this become clearer than at the ICAD Residential Labour Camp here, housing migrant labourers from the Indian subcontinent in their thousands in one square kilometre.
The camp will be Mr. Modi’s second port of call in the UAE. Security agencies of both nations have cleared a select group of 300 migrant workers to interact with him in a modest 20X40-metre sports hall on the premises.
“We came to know of the visit five days ago, and these are the arrangements that we could do. Earlier, we had sent a list of 350 people, but it has been pared down to 300,” said an official involved in the arrangements.
The nearly 2.6-million-strong Indian diaspora in the UAE sends the largest amount of remittances — up to $13 billion annually, or 60 per cent of all remittance, despite making up only 17.5 per cent of the diaspora population.
That is, however, only one part of the story. As Arif, the manager of a grocery store at the camp, says: “It will be good to see an Indian Prime Minister meet real NRIs of the Gulf, with their real problems.” Migrants live six or seven to a room and eat in company-run messes.
The excitement at the camp is palpable, with even those not in the chosen 300 joining in. “Actually, I was told by my Bangladeshi colleague that Prime Minister Modi would be visiting, there is a lot of excitement here,” Mr. Arif says.
Official sources describe Mr. Modi’s visit to the camp as an acknowledgement not just of the diaspora but also of the UAE as host country. “This is the Prime Minister’s first visit to the region, and he has picked the UAE mainly for this reason,” an External Affairs Ministry official said.
