“Pari gharka khanxa ta bidesh hidna lako xan. Tanna paisa kamaune vaye.” The sentence may be too generalized and vague but is eerily familiar to us all. Similar words have been said in too many houses in Nepal every day. Foreign employment has been a stable base of financial gain for Nepalese people ever since the conclusion of Anglo-Nepal war, when English army started recruiting the Gorkha division. 150 years now, foreign employment in various countries in various form has been the backbone of economy for the whole country. It has some problem, people complain about it, still it is growing as a more and more stable source than ever before.

Foreign employment, in simple words, means going from one country to another to earn money. Most people would rather stay near home and work, so it might be because of lack of such opportunities nearer to home or simply because of the pay, which is often many times of what can be found in Nepal. Even though the process of such employment is often long and confusing and sometimes even unreliable, people still tend to favor them over what is available in Nepal. While it is usually believed that the Mongolian descendants are more liable to such employment, a more thorough research indicates that This tendency does not limit itself to one particular caste or economic background. What changes is the location of such employment. The Mongolians are more likely to be accepted in the British and other armed forces. Those with lesser academic qualifications usually opt for the middle east while those with better qualifications travel to Europe or North America.

According to Department of Foreign Employment, Nepal, there are 2896 legal Manpower agencies registered and actively working in the year 2017-2018. All these companies sent 323876 people out of country last year, among which 304568 were male and 19308 were female. Mind you, these are registered companies only, there are numerous unregistered companies in Nepal and many people have been observed to exit the country by first traveling to India. Also this data does not include any people who go to India for any kind of work. Thus we can imagine that this number is a very gross underestimation.

A lot has been documented about these employees. The problems they face due to corrupt manpower, devious middle men as well as the hostility faced from both the people and the environment on foreign countries have been a subject of many literature, songs and even tele-series and movies. Many a times, the employees themselves come back and share their stories of their time in such employment, sometimes wonderful and sometimes harsh. Some don’t come back and their families share their stories. The effects of such employment,, however, in the family who often have to stay behind has not been studied as much. And it usually varies from family to family based on individual skill and more often then not, luck. Still, a few important deductions can be made by observing a lot of families in whole.

The major impact of foreign employment is without doubt the economic upliftment of the family back at home. The lack of decent opportunities of employment within the country is self-evident. This combined with the fact that even those who do have a job do not usually have enough salary and many have to work very hard for little push away even those who want to work in the country. A constant lack of opportunities which seems to decrease even more with time has sent many a man of the productive age away. The group includes all sorts of people, from the most uneducated to the most educated. The salary that they send back to their families has not only provided bread and butter but in many cases directly contributed in improving the quality of living.

The need for manpower in those foreign countries have also been very useful for the least academically qualified. With many countries rushing for modernization, manual labor is always in the shortage. Even a least educated person can thus provide for a family comfortably, making that person more useful than what the society would suggest. The family need to, in a way, invest less and get more return.

For a few, this foreign employment may give more than just economic rewards. A chance to see how things work is seldom available in the remote villages. A wise man who happened to have an opportunity of such employment bring back tons of experience and exposure back to the country. Though the geographic condition and other physical and other limitations hamper all of those experience to bring fruit, step by step even the remote village is pushed towards modernization. Sometimes a new source of income is created. Sometime a new way to cultivate a ream. Such simple contributions can not only ease the sufferings of the poor but also uplift the whole country in the long run.

Two major Problems have been noted by the author regarding the family of The employed. The first is that the employed and his/her relations back home are often out of contact for a good amount of time. This prompts a natural decay in attachment to the family, who can barely see their sons, husband or father. This is especially difficult for the aged and the newly married. The aged, though happy for their children, often miss their children in their helplessness. This leads to a stressed and depressed state sometimes, for money cannot replace a missing person. Often the man goes away as soon as he gets married, placing his wife at a new place with new people and given new responsibilities. The sheer number of wives who elope while their husband is away is staggering. It supports the assumption that lack of physical and social relation has decayed. It presents a social problem where generally established social norms seems to fade away.

Thus, Foreign employment has provided a lot of families with good quality of life but it also comes with its own problems. it is impossible to cut out foreign employment in present conditions, but it also needs to be made better.