The undetected undercurrent of unorganised student migration from Kerala to other countries has been uncovered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to the NoRKA-Roots, 173 students who travelled to Ukraine were registered, however during the “Operation Ganga” evacuation effort, 3,428 students were rather tallied.
According to a NoRKA-Roots program, students from Kerala have gone to up to 54 nations, including the Isle of Man, a sovereign British Crown dependency located in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland. The initiative was started in 2020 to provide a centralised platform for all students who pursue higher education overseas.
With the goal of providing students with insurance coverage, the organisation started distributing student ID cards in April 2020. Over 3,000 students have signed up for the NoRKA-Roots thus far, with more than 50% of them coming from nations including Ukraine, China, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Moldova, Russia, the Philippines, and Germany.
The bulk of students have not yet registered with the organisation, according to NoRKA Roots CEO K. Harikrishnan Namboothiri, therefore the registration statistics simply show a trend. Given that the number of Indian students studying abroad has increased four times over the past 14 years, India is really the second-largest student exporter in the world behind China. Five hundred thousand Indian students are reportedly studying overseas, and a significant portion of them come from Kerala.
Approximately 30% of students who choose to continue higher education presently, according to our estimation, choose a foreign nation. As it has several social, emotional, and economic effects, including brain drain and reverses remittance, managing student movement from the State urgently requires policy-level involvement, according to Mr. Namboothiri.
According to him, neither the Center nor the States currently has a framework in place to control or support organised student migration.
Today, student recruiting companies and educational consultants—the bulk of whom operate without official certification or approval—help the majority of migrants. According to Mr. Namboothiri, the second method is for individuals to process their own applications.
Although their numbers will be small, students who self-process their applications move around more safely than the other two. The majority of grievances about student mobility stem from migration that was aided by a third party. According to Mr. Namboothiri, this necessitates a policy-level intervention to ensure transparency.
