The lure of the Persian Gulf is far from over, says Ravi Pillai

West Asia, according to NRI businessman Ravi Pillai, will continue to be an alluring employment destination at least for the next 20 years.

“The world will not function without energy, and for energy, the Persian Gulf will have to continue to function,” he reasoned in a recent interaction with The Hindu. Mr. Pillai also saw the Persian Gulf transform itself as an investment destination over the past four and a half decades.

As someone who has employed around 1.75 lakh people, Mr. Pillai, who also serves as a director of NORKA-Roots, the field agency under the Non-Resident Keralites Affairs department responsible for everything concerning non-resident Keralites, says Keralites tend to land skilled and high-tech jobs in the Persian Gulf and Europe while unskilled workers are drawn from Indian States such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha as well as from countries such as the Philippines, Nepal and Bangladesh, citing examples of recruitment patterns in his own businesses. The United States, meanwhile, is becoming a more difficult destination for international workers.

Retirement age

While it remains a concern that Kerala is fast becoming an ageing society, Mr. Pillai believes that there’s a need for the State to extend its retirement age, as the “productive age of its people has increased considerably”.

“Earlier, people would be considered old at the age of 60 years, but now most remain working and active well beyond that. So, it’s only prudent for the State to extend the retirement age so that the skills of its people can be fully leveraged,” he says.

Mr. Pillai believes that the State has embraced major changes in step with those across the globe to attract investments. “Big changes have taken place in the State in the last 10 years. Our administrators have seen the way the world has changed and realised that if you are not business-friendly, no business is going to come here. We have sparse availability of land or raw materials but possess tremendous skills and human resource. Investors come here to make use of those,” he says.

Mr. Pillai also believes that Indian businesspersons now command respect outside the country. Across the world, there is an impression that Indians are rich and affluent — an impression, he says, that originated in the wake of the opulent wedding held by Mukesh Ambani for his son, which Mr. Pillai believes attracted the attention of the entire world.

A native of Kollam, Mr. Pillai says he instituted student scholarships in collaboration with NORKA-Roots as a means to give back to the society which nourished him. With a corpus of ₹525 crore, scholarships are granted to needy students from Plus Two up to postgraduate levels, with 20% of the awards in each category reserved for the wards of NoRKs and 5% for students from the differently abled.