Afsan Mohammed, a 30-year-old from the southern Indian state of Telangana, could not find a job that matched his skills, despite having a business degree. While working a retail job with low pay, he found a YouTube channel that promised work in Moscow. He left India on Nov. 9, 2023, but instead of the job he had hoped for in Moscow, he found himself coerced into fighting in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He did not return alive.
His brother, Imran Mohammed, told me that his brother fell prey to the lure of better wages. “He was promised a monthly salary of 45,000 rupees [$532], which would increase to 150,000 rupees [$1,775] after three months, in addition to a Russian passport and citizenship,” he said.
Afsan Mohammed, a 30-year-old from the southern Indian state of Telangana, could not find a job that matched his skills, despite having a business degree. While working a retail job with low pay, he found a YouTube channel that promised work in Moscow. He left India on Nov. 9, 2023, but instead of the job he had hoped for in Moscow, he found himself coerced into fighting in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He did not return alive.
His brother, Imran Mohammed, told me that his brother fell prey to the lure of better wages. “He was promised a monthly salary of 45,000 rupees [$532], which would increase to 150,000 rupees [$1,775] after three months, in addition to a Russian passport and citizenship,” he said.
Afsan Mohammed was one of the known 91 Indian men who went to Russia for work last year, only to find themselves deployed in a war zone, either as support staff for the Russian army or active fighters. A few weeks before he died, another Indian national, Hemil Mangukiya, was killed in Russia. But Russia is not the only war zone to lure hopeful Indian workers. Pat Nibin Maxwell, 31, was killed in a missile attack near the northern Israeli border—he’s one of thousands of Indians who have replaced Palestinian labor in Israel amid its war with Hamas. Despite India’s booming economy, economically marginalized Indians still seek opportunities overseas, regardless of how dangerous the region they find themselves working in may be.
Just a month after Maxwell’s death, more than 60 Indians left for Israel in April; they were one of the first groups in a bilateral agreement in which India promised to send around 42,000 workers to Israel. To date, more than 5,000 Indians have been deployed there. Trade unions and civil rights groups have questioned the wisdom of sending Indian workers to Israel without any guarantees of safety, but the Indian government has enthusiastically backed the project.
In a recruitment drive, which concluded on May 24, over 2,200 workers from Telangana applied for construction jobs in Israel, and 905 were selected. In two other drives in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, 5,617 of over 8,500 hopefuls were selected. In a recent drive, held in September, a delegation of 12 Israeli officials arrived in India to oversee the recruitment of up to 10,000 workers.
War is not the only hazard. Earlier this year, 250 Indians were rescued from cyber slavery in Cambodia, while nearly 2,500 Indians died in Qatar while working under harsh conditions between 2010 and 2020. Several others are trapped in the Gulf, cheated by dishonest agents, and caught in a web of debt and legal trouble. Hundreds of Indian seafarers, working in dehumanizing conditions, remain stuck in countries like Iran, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
So why are Indians so willing to risk dangers overseas? According to a 2024 report by the International Labour Organization and Institute for Human Development, youth made up 83 percent of India’s unemployed workforce in 2022. Many, like Afsan Mohammed, are educated but unable to find jobs matching their skills back home.
India’s unemployment rate reached 8.1 percent in April, before dropping somewhat later in the year. The opposition has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of turning India into a “center of unemployment,” calling the situation a “ticking bomb.” Modi refused to acknowledge the crisis, saying that the country is generating enough jobs. The electorate, however, seems to disagree. A survey done in the run-up to India’s 2024 general elections revealed that unemployment was a key concern among Indian voters, and the final election results backed this up.
Although India is known as the world’s fastest-growing economy, with a growth that is likely to outpace China’s soon, the boom has failed to generate the jobs needed, especially for university graduates. Despite Modi’s initiatives aimed at boosting manufacturing in India, such as “Make in India” and “Aatmanirbhar Bharat,” jobs in that sector halved between 2016 and 2021. The number of self-employed people has increased, as has the share of India’s workforce employed in construction, owing to a lack of higher quality jobs.
Several crises have left poorer Indians increasingly desperate. In 2016, the Indian government nullified 86 percent of the country’s cash to clean out “black money.” Those worst hit by this demonetization policy were India’s cash-dependent micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which largely operate in the informal sector, form the spine of the Indian economy, and generate the most nonfarm jobs in the country.
Subsequently, the poorly implemented goods and services tax of 2017 dealt another blow to the MSMEs, increasing their operating costs, and dropping GDP growth to 4 percent. Then came one of the world’s strictest COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in India, leading to a mass exodus of migrants to their rural homes. Reverse migration from cities added nearly 56 million workers to India’s agriculture sector between 2020 and 2023. This reversed a 20-year shift from the low-productivity agricultural sector to high-productivity nonagricultural sectors in India.
Between 2014, when Modi came to power, and 2022, real wage growth—wages adjusted for inflation—have stagnated at less than 1 percent in India. Stagnating wages push workers deeper into poverty, increase inequality, and aggravate the economic vulnerability of families. Add in India’s rising cost of living across spectrums in recent years, from daily necessities and health care to education and housing, and you have millions of workers desperate for jobs—even if it means risking their lives in conflict zones. Israel, for instance, has promised the men, who typically earn less than half a dollar per hour for construction jobs in India, a monthly salary of up to 140,000 Indian rupees (about $1,657).
Although more than 30 million Indians reside overseas, India has no coherent policy to protect them. However, the government does offer insurance support of a million rupees ($11,836) for migrant workers and has created frameworks to advise them on safe migration practices, like finding work abroad through registered recruitment agents.
But the reality has been repeated tragedy followed by knee-jerk responses. For instance, after the plight of the 91 Indians who went to Russia last year came to light, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs issued warnings to Indian citizens about the dangers of seeking work in Russia. The Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s crime detection agency, arrested a few recruitment agents. The bodies of Afsan Mohammed and Mangukiya were brought back to India in March, and New Delhi claimed to be in touch with Moscow over the fate of the remaining men. But there’s still no consistent long-term policy to protect Indians overseas.
Russia and Israel aren’t the first instances of Indian workers being killed in conflict zones abroad. In 2018, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs announced the discovery of a mass grave in Iraq, where the bodies of 39 Indian construction workers were discovered—four years after they were kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Mosul.
In 2015, Modi appealed to nonresident Indians to return to India. “There was a time when our ancestors went around the world to explore possibilities and to look for opportunities. But the time has changed, and India is now full of opportunities that beckon you all,” he said.
That same year, Nachhatar Singh, from the state of Punjab, was evacuated from war-torn Iraq but later returned to it. Singh told a journalist that he didn’t want to return to Iraq, “but after doing menial jobs to earn a living for a few months, I could not even make enough for two meals a day.”
We don’t know where Singh is now, but we do know where thousands like him are—standing in lines outside government offices, desperate for a ticket to Israel.