Abu Dhabi: There’s an eerie silence echoing through some of Kerala’s grandest houses.
Their occupants are not at home — and maybe won’t be for the next 30 years. They are all Non-Resident Keralites (NRKs), who constitute a considerable proportion of the population, who work mainly in the Gulf, the US and Europe. In fact, many do not expect to live there until they retire.
The issue resurfaced last week following comments from the Malayalam poet and environmental activist Sugathakumari at a function in Kerala.
“I raised this issue now because people are building big houses when a huge number of such houses are empty. The consumption of natural resources — the mining of sand and rocks — for construction is taking a huge toll on Kerala’s environment,” the poet told Gulf News on Sunday from Thiruvananthapuram.
“When I visited the UAE I requested my people to rethink their obsession with big houses,” Sugathakumari said.
A Kerala Government survey in 2013 found the total number of NRKs to be 1.63 million, with 507,000 in the UAE, but this figure was interpreted by many as a conservative estimate as the actual figure could be much higher.
Although no official data is available, almost 50 per cent of the more than two million Indian expatriates in the UAE are said to be Keralites, T.P. Seetharam, Indian Ambassador to the UAE, said.
Of the 11.22 million houses for a total population of 33.39 million, 1.19 million were unoccupied in Kerala, according to a 2011 Government of India census.
Renjith Balakrishnan, from Kerala, does not want to build his own house back home. The 29-year-old Abu Dhabi-based engineer is one of the many Keralites who are concerned about the number of empty houses in Kerala.
“I would like to live in my ancestral home with my parents and siblings as it will strengthen family relationships and avoid a negative impact on nature [due to construction],” he told Gulf News.
Expatriates cannot be blamed for fulfilling their dream of building their own house but a discussion on using vacant houses is needed, said Esmail Rawther, the Dubai-based Director of Norka, a Kerala Government agency for NRKs.
Many small expatriate families have a tendency to build big houses as a status symbol or to ‘show off’, Shirumon Saifudheen, a 28-year-old draughtsman said. “It is a huge waste of money. This culture has to be changed,” he said.
Although one house per family should not be ruled out, the trend to keep on building extravagant houses should be stopped, Jeevan Prashant, 29, a project engineer, said.
