ECR and ECNR

Decades back, when travelling abroad, I remember my passport had an ECNR label on it. It stood for Emigration Clearance Not Required. I never bothered to find out about it back then, and only recently stumbled upon an article that explained what it was all about.

 

In India, people who haven’t completed schooling until 10^th standard were issued an ECR (Emigration Clearance Required) passport. When men with such passports want to travel abroad (18 countries on that list) for employment, they needed to get an “Emigration Clearance” from the Protector of Emigrants department. For women holding such ECR passports, it was worse – if under the age of 30, they could not go for work to those countries at all.

 

This sounds outrageous and discriminatory, so why was such a policy even created? Pranay Kotasthane says the reason was actually a good one:

“This system was adopted to prevent the exploitation of uneducated and, hence, vulnerable Indians. The logic was that this additional gate would prevent emigrants from taking up work that could be discriminatory or exploitative. Faced with the additional threat of human trafficking, it was further deduced that the best way to protect women of the ECR category was to prevent them from emigrating altogether.”

 

But policies should be judged by their impact and effectiveness, not the (good) intentions behind them. The policy resulted in agents who supplied fake documents to get ECR status. Protector of Emigrants officials could be bribed to issue clearances. In older times, when security measures in passports were fewer, ECNR passports would be stolen and photos changed to be used by an ECR person (or used by an ECR who looked similar enough to the photo).

 

Another viewpoint on this matter was the following. If the nation cannot educate everyone and/or cannot generate jobs for all, then is it right for the nation to “create roadblocks that prevent the person from choosing the ‘exit’ option”?

 

Thankfully, the ECR regime was folded up some time back. So have all those less educated folks travelling to work abroad now been thrown to the wolves? Fortunately, no. Since scrapping the ECR regime, multiple Indian governments have signed MoU’s with several countries obligating the “the host country is required to take measures for protection and welfare of the workers in the organised sector”. In addition, Indian consulates in several countries are provided with funds to help out citizens in distress. In many countries, the Indian consulates have set up 24 x 7 helplines for citizens to call if they need help.

 

It is good to see government policies being changed, even removed. It is even more heartening that the original intent is now pursued by other, better means.