By Roland Francis Source: Goan Voice UK Daily Newsletter 28 July 2013 at www.goanvoice.org.uk
It was 1963 and under the mistaken assumption that I needed some coaching in my high school studies (the problem actually was that I spent less time on my books than I should have), my father got a 23 year old Goan lad from my Bombay building to tutor me. He had just got a job with the Bank of India in the Fort area and in a couple of months he interviewed for a clerical position with then Gulf Bank of Kuwait and soon he was gone. He kept in touch with us and we happily followed his progression. He took a part-time job with a Kuwaiti trader who soon became a multimillionaire in the booming oil city. Our Goan lad had become his right hand man. He met and married a Swedish woman and in time he relocated to Sweden, a wealthy man from his time in Kuwait. In due course when I went to the Gulf myself, working for an English company in a senior management position relatively restricted in pay by being hired from India and I have sometimes wondered whether I would have been much better off being a trusted lieutenant of the many Arabs I came across who called me to work for them while they became very rich men. It was not unusual to be in such a situation in those days - starting to work for an Arab for less than you were worth but soon having access to earning very big money. There were many success stories of Goans going to the Gulf like that. Initially they went from Karachi and Bombay but men and women from Goa and even East Africa followed when economic conditions in the latter countries deteriorated. Most of the salaries may not have been astronomical but they were tax-free and earners were able to send money to relatives back home while socking away enough for a nest egg. The Arabs were of the generation that knew India from the dates, fish, pearl and gold-smuggling trades they carried on with it while they were desert poor. They especially liked Goans since they were polite, Christian and gave no trouble. Although they were rude and exploitative to their Goan housemaids, they gave them gold, took them with family on foreign trips and got work visas for their lazy no-good sons in Goa all of which which were valuable perquisites to their paltry salaries. Not to say that the Arabs didn't hire anyone else. The heads of families who built their trading empires with the huge incoming flow of new oil money went to Europe and other countries to get their executives and managers. The Americans weren't interested then. The US was at an economic peak and the only Americans to be seen in the Persian-Arabian Gulf were those in Aramco in Saudi Arabia and those in the oil-drilling service companies like Schlumberger and Halliburton elsewhere in that region. They didn't like the English much although they needed them because they didn't bend to their personal will and they didn't trust the Egyptians, Palestinians and the Lebanese, Iraqis and Syrians not to cheat them while their backs were turned. It was a very personal society then. If they trusted you they lifted you if they didn't, you might as well leave. Your abilities came second, if at all. The situation has changed a lot now as is to be expected. That generation of Emiratis, Kuwaitis, Omanis, Qataris and Saudis has given way to their sons and grandsons mostly educated in the US, quite a few of them in Ivy League universities. The Ivy leaguers may not have all academically qualified for admission but their governments have made sure that generous financial grants and gifts to those universities paved the way for their boys and girls. Money was never a problem - not when oil was $30/bbl and certainly not when it became $110/bbl as it is now. Initially the Gulf youth partied their way through American schools. They came out with degrees that were suspect, proved by their ineptitude when they returned to high positions and still depended on expats for management strategies. That has gradually changed. Either by government prompting or by personally understanding that their country cannot prosper forever through other people's visions, they have become more serious in their learning. On returning they have become less dependent and more capable. Many of the companies operating there which were expected to flounder once the Brits left, have prospered beyond measure. My own former employer the British Cable and Wireless which renamed itself QTel and is now Oredoo has plotted a growth chart that was unimaginable once, earning revenues comparable to a large North American corporation. That is not to say that Goans cannot find their way there any more. However, the middle class employee has given way to either the low-level hire with pathetic wages, exception being those there for many years whose salaries have shot through the roof, or the professional classes, those in healthcare, IT, oil industry techies or teachers in international schools. I know of a few Goan Canadian girls who have gone there to teach and are very happy at setting up a solid financial future. Then or now, despite all the negative stories throughout the years, Goans have much to thank the Gulf Arab for their journeys from poverty to prosperity.