The Hindu Business Line : Nursing a dream

Last week around 250 nurses from Kerala prepared to leave for the Maldives, thanks to the efforts of the State-run Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants (ODEPC). The Maldives has also asked ODEPC, for the first time, to recruit 30 doctors and other medical professionals from Kerala.

As they go about their task of caring for patients in hospitals in that island nation in the Indian Ocean, these nurses can rest assured that they themselves are no islands.

They share the fate of hundreds of women who were born in Kerala, received their early education there, and then travelled to other Indian States to obtain their professional degrees, after which they emigrated all over the world.

CHANGING DESTINATION

In the old days, the nursing El Dorado was the Middle East. During the 1990s, many girls from poor, agricultural, Syrian Christian families, especially in the central Travancore area, took bank loans, often by pledging property, and joined a nursing course for a job in the Gulf.

But this is no longer the preferred destination. From 2003, the United States and the United Kingdom have become favoured destinations, ever since the two countries relaxed qualification norms for nurses. The main attraction is money.

LUCARATIVE JOBS

A nurse in the US or the UK earns $35,000-50,000 annually, much more than he or she can ever hope to earn in India. Besides, there are the other fringe benefits, like a green card, good housing and other facilities.

Kerala has produced more nurses than any other State in India. According to Sreedevi Jacob of the Women's Feature Service, by 1991, Kerala had 62 nursing schools, and in 2003 alone, 17 private nursing schools opened across the State.

Officials told Jacob that every day almost 80-100 attestations are granted to nurses seeking jobs abroad. Nurses have been one of the largest emigrant groups from India to the US, and many have settled in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

DARKER SIDE

However, there is a darker side to this success story. In `When Women Come First: Gender and Class in Transnational Migration,' Dr Sheba George, a postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that in this unusual migration process, women became the "uncontested breadwinners" in their households and this resulted in "drastic changes in gender relations..."

According to Sheba George, the nursing profession is often viewed in India as a "dirty" occupation for women, partly because it involves touching unknown men. It is a well-paid occupation, however, and a current worldwide shortage of nurses makes it relatively easy for them to emigrate, bringing their families with them.

MEN'S DILEMMA

However, their husbands are caught in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, a working wife brings certain economic benefits. On the other, she breaks all conventions of the man being the breadwinner and unquestioned head of the household. Many of these men once held respected professional jobs in India, but are now relegated to labouring in blue-collar jobs, looking after the kids, and cleaning the house.

As Dr George explains: "Whereas with most other Asian Indian groups, the men immigrate first, in the case of Kerala Christians, female nurses have come first and only later sponsored husbands and families."

GENDER BENDER

In the process they became the "uncontested breadwinners" while the men became "downwardly mobile, both economically and socially" resulting in "drastic changes in gender relations" in their households.

Nonetheless, the fact that hundreds of young girls (and, these days, increasingly, boys as well) still spend large sums of money to become nurses speaks volumes of the profession's allure. As Kerala continues to lead the rest of the country in this area too, the lessons that these nurses learn in the world outside can be put to good use.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com

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