RETURN OF THE NATIVE

Dilip Narayanan Nampi’s successful career in Dubai sank abruptly this March when the MNC he worked for handed him the pink slip in the face of losses borne during the coronavirus lockdown. The 40-year-old IT engineer, who is in Dubai since 2003, is hunting for a new job; his wife’s income, as an HR executive, won’t be enough, he says, to pull through in one of the world’s most expensive cities. “The pandemic has changed Dubai overnight. The barriers of class and status in the expat community have vanished. We are all at the mercy of the disease,” says a distraught Nampi.

With hirings in deep freeze, the clamour to give preference to locals in jobs growing and the oil economies of the Gulf region in a bind, Nampi’s chances of a bounce-back look bleak. Among his desperate options could be a return to his native land Kerala—a difficult choice that thousands of nonresident Keralites (NRKs) are contemplating as the Covid