Opinion: Opinion | Lured By Salaries, Fed To War: How India's Jobless Youth Have Become Canon Fodder

As per India's Ministry of External Affairs, 259 Indian nationals are believed to have been drafted into the Russian armed forces. Out of these, 139 have obtained an early discharge, while information remains to be sought about 69 others who may reportedly still be serving, or whose statuses remain undetermined.

This raises a pertinent policy question: why and how were Indian citizens in the civilian overseas-employment market able to get into a foreign military force without prior identification? Moreover, the matter exposes the frailty of overseas-employment regulation, highlighting questions about the credibility of recruitment agents and emphasising the gravity of wage disparities, making a high-risk foreign military job appear unignorably enticing.

Why People Take The Risk

Latest reports from Telangana, where youth workers were trapped by allegedly being offered salaries of about Rs 2 lakh a month, along with insurance and an additional bonus, highlight the pivotal role of financial incentives in understanding the recruitment process. Additionally, one worker paid Rs. 2.5 lakh a month to an agent to secure employment in Russia.

These foreign salaries, albeit associated with tremendous risks, can matter a great deal to workers from extremely low-income backgrounds as they present the opportunity to alter their economic status. The informal nature of local employment, coupled with irregular or poor salary structures, makes this sort of overseas employment seem even more lucrative despite being surrounded by incomplete information regarding the work conditions and expectations.

This environment acts as a breeding ground for predatory agent behaviour, where they do not necessarily need to conceal the perils of such overseas employment opportunities. Rather, they end up presenting any risks of this as temporary, manageable, and financially justifiable. Moreover, the worker may even be deceived into believing that the job involves roles related to security, logistics, or other support work rather than war-zone combat. Hence, the promised payout inadvertently becomes the most prominent part of the equation.

The predicament of the workers in Russia, as highlighted by the Ministry of External Affairs and the news reports from Telangana, demands stricter regulation of overseas employment through stern enforcement against fraudulent agents and more accessible employment opportunities within India.

Under Section 10 of the Emigration Act, 1983, it is mandatory for recruiting agents to acquire registration from the Protector General of Emigrants before recruiting Indian citizens overseas. This law is intended to curb fraud and exploitation by safeguarding recruitment through identifiable and liable intermediaries.

The Ministry of External Affairs mandates that the operation of recruitment only through a valid registration certificate and an online platform known as the eMigrate portal is used for the allotment of these certificates. There also exists a publicly available published list of registered recruiting agents. Furthermore, according to a July 2026 parliamentary response, there are roughly 3,505 unregistered agents on the portal.

The framework obliges the registered agents to provide detailed employment records, maintain a faultless record of contracts and advertisements, issue all receipts of payments, etc. It also forbids the usage of sub-agents for recruitment while limiting the service fee payable by an emigrant to the equivalent of 45 days of wages, subject to a maximum of Rs. 20,000.

In spite of such guidelines in place, the cases emphasise a discrepancy between formal regulations and actual practices on the ground. It is clear that workers have been approached through informal sources, and may have even been recruited through social media platforms or induced to travel on visas that lacked congruence with the employment ultimately provided. In cases like these, it is unlikely that recruitment would come to the attention of the regulated system enforcers until the worker has already left India and commenced their work abroad.

Limits Of Digital Regulation

Although the eMigrate system was developed to make overseas recruitment unambiguous and transparent, the digital regulation is effective only when the recruitment passes through this channel. If a worker travels to another country under the pretense of something else, such as a tourist visa, student visa, or other non-employment-related visas, the system would not record the actual job.

Moreover, if the worker enters a new employment contract after arriving in the foreign country, the prior employment information that may even be on the record becomes irrelevant.

The policy conundrum thus is not just to expand the eMigrate system, but to plan the infrastructure in a way such that it connects effectively with visa verification and post-arrival monitoring. Such checks must be undertaken at three stages: before departure, upon arrival in the foreign country, and after the beginning of employment. There must also be a mechanism to routinely check whether the Indian citizen has remained with the same employer or has discreetly decided to enter illegitimate contracts under the guise of more significant payouts.

In the absence of these safeguards, the workers' whereabouts may become untraceable, rendering the government incapable of protecting them, as is the case in the Russia scenario.

The 'Agents'

The situation makes it clear that the role of intermediaries must be put under greater scrutiny. The MEA's advisory warns Indians against accepting opportunities from unverified individuals and also highlights that some Indians were deliberately seeking military recruitment in exchange for seemingly life-changing financial benefits.

The advisory directs us towards two separate categories: individuals accepting military contracts willingly, and those who may have been misled towards them.

An appropriate policy response must differentiate between these scenarios and investigate both with distinguished approaches. It must begin with authorities identifying the involved agents, examining transaction records, and authenticating advertisements to understand which of the two categories the case in point corresponds to. In certain circumstances, the cases could involve provisions pertaining to fraud, unauthorised recruitment, forgery, trafficking, or other gross violations of the Emigration Act.

The MEA has stated that registered complaints against fraudulent agents are referred to the state police for investigation and prosecution when needed. The Protector of Emigrant offices, state authorities, police agencies, and digital platforms are also used to conduct awareness campaigns regarding all of this. However, the effectiveness or the lack thereof must be assessed against the fiasco in Russia. Awareness campaigns are warning systems, and they are ineffective if fraudulent agents continue with such exploitative practices.

Information Asymmetry

Workers exercising caution, however, is just one side of the story. Individual responsibility cannot and must not be negated. One must also be cognisant of the unequal relationship between the recruiter and the applicant.

While the recruiter may know the foreign employer and all the other relevant information about the role, the applicant may only know the financial upsides and a few other minuscule pieces of information, such as the job title and the date of departure, etc.

The information asymmetry becomes more profound when the employee does not even speak the local language in the foreign country. A contract signed in a native language that is incomprehensible to the Indian employee makes contractual consent non-existent. Therefore, receiving an accurate translation of the contract and an independent explanation becomes instrumental to preventing these cases from proliferating further.

This necessitates that employment contracts that involve greater security risks connected with military operations, security organisations, or defence contractors receive greater scrutiny. The workers must be explicitly informed about all the risks that the job entails so that they can appropriately weigh the pros and cons of such an entanglement. A general description simply stating 'work for the army' must not be acceptable as sufficient disclosure and must entail serious repercussions.

In the context of India and Russia's longstanding and extensive defence, energy, and strategic ties, this situation presents a complicated diplomatic challenge. India must show greater interest in settling this matter through continuous bilateral engagement rather than public confrontation.

Although reportedly 139 Indians have been discharged early, the numbers remaining, including all the affected citizens, merit resolution through formal bilateral mechanisms. India must seek regular information from Russian authorities regarding the whereabouts, identity, location, and legal status of every Indian national recruited into the Russian military apparatus. There must also be guaranteed consular access and channels of communication to their families.

A Multi-Front Problem

The recruitment of Indian nationals in Russia's armed forces reveals a structural problem at the convergence of migration, a dwindling labour market, and ineffective foreign policy. The lack of viable economic opportunities in India makes overseas employment extremely attractive, paving a convenient path for exploitative agents to deceive Indian citizens through information asymmetry. Existing regulatory mechanisms, although well-intentioned as all policies are, fail to capture those that travel beyond formal channels. By the time the state takes cognizance of the matter, the problem exacerbates to a point where diplomatic relations are under enormous duress.

The immediate agenda must be to urgently establish the status of the Indian citizens who remain unidentified and potentially trapped in a system that they were pushed deceitfully into. They must also be immediately rescued by the state. In the long term, the priority must be to fortify overseas employment mechanisms so that such cases can be prevented.