India government is looking to build a future for laborers in their home country so that they won't have to work in Gulf countries in low-paid jobs, said senior leader and spokesman for the BJP Yashwant Sinha. Speaking to Dubai based ‘7Days’ newspaper on the sidelines of the PAN IIM (Indian Institute of Management) Gulf Summit in Dubai at a discussion entitled ‘India 2020: Realizing the potential’, Sinha said if Indian workers are given the skills, they would have more opportunities in their home country. “Unskilled workers should not have any reason to leave India. That’s the reason why we are putting so much emphasis on skills”, he said.

Yashwant Sinha, a key member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janta Party, claims the government is committed to tackling issues of the poor, particularly in rural India. Unskilled workers from India will not have to settle for a life of manual labor in the Gulf construction industry in future, he said.

“People who have skills can go anywhere else in the world and work. But unskilled laborers are forced to leave because they don’t have employment opportunities in India,” he said, speaking on the sidelines of the PAN IIM (Indian Institute of Management) Gulf Summit in Dubai.

Sinha, the first Indian to be elected Chairman of the Development Committee of the World Bank and the IMF in 2000, denied that workers in the Gulf have been forsaken by the Indian government and have been left with no choice but to put up with low wages and poor living conditions.

Sinha said education could transform the lives of many who travel to work in the Gulf States, leaving their families behind. The new government's education move is in line with Modi’s ‘Made in India’ campaign to turn the country into a global manufacturing hub, increasing the country’s 15 per cent share of manufacturing to 25 per cent, which in turn will increase income and create jobs. Indians make up the largest expatriate group in the Gulf countries.

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