Indian expats show off with luxury cars

Abu Dhabi: Among the families of low- and middle-income Indian expatriates, people from the south Indian state of Kerala, who constitute the largest community here, tend to indulge in extravagance to “show-off”, expat Shamsudheen says.

When he recently visited a small village in Kannur district in Kerala, he found a village with almost every home with a Toyota Innova car. Most of the breadwinners of those homes are ordinary workers in the Gulf who cannot afford such a luxury. “But they purchase the car to show off!” he said.

Their income from working so many years in the Gulf is spent mainly on three things - constructing a big house, extravagant wedding ceremonies [female family members’ weddings involve huge dowries] , and other luxuries like car, jewellery and clothes.

These expatriate workers send money for such purposes while they live here in the Gulf with a lot of hardship. Their family members who sleep in separate bedrooms with attached bathrooms at the huge house generally do not know that their breadwinner sleeps on a bunk bed and waits in a queue to use the bathroom in shared accommodation.

After all this suffering, when they return home, some of them end up selling their huge houses to find a livelihood, which often does not solve their problems.