Nov 7, 2014

After having travelled to Dubai 6-7 times for business trips in the past 3 years, we finally travelled as a family for a short vacation in my 11-year old daughter’s Diwali Holidays. A 4-night holiday is a good enough time spent in Dubai.

A population of 2mn (lesser than New Bombay) is an amazing statistic for someone coming from India, where Dubai would have been the 14^th most populous country after Nagpur and before Indore. That this population has reached here after trebling over the past 20 years is yet another wonder. Of course, if you slice it, more than half of this 2mn population are Indian, another 25% Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and Arab UAE nationals comprising 10-15%!! There are 2 classes of Indians among this 1mn of them – almost 90% of them employed in menial jobs like construction workers, cab drivers, store clerks, city civic cleaners. The remaining 10% Indians are in white-collar jobs with oil & engineering companies, some IT companies and many with financial services companies.

Over my 10 years of visiting Dubai, Indian cab drivers have been replaced significantly by Pakistani drivers, Indian retail store & hotel clerks by Philippino nationals, and hotel/restaurant waiters by Bangladeshis. I wonder where do the 900,000 blue-collar Indians work now ? Possibly, some of them in the textile and gold stores in Old Dubai, some of them in the Port areas. Much against popular assumption, Dubai economy is NOT oil-driven. 7% of GDP comes from oil, down from an all-time high figure of 20%. Oil reserves have depleted over time and almost over by now. The economy is driven today by Trade, Construction, Tourism, Aviation and Financial Services.