NORKA Roots — Kerala's Pioneering Return-Migrant Agency, and Its Documented Awareness Gap

Established in 1996 as the first dedicated state department for diaspora affairs in India, Non-Resident Keralites' Affairs (NORKA) and its 2002 field agency NORKA Roots run welfare, skill-development, employment-matching and reintegration programmes for Kerala's roughly 2.1 million-strong emigrant population, most of whom work in Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
When COVID-19 forced an estimated 1.4 million non-resident Keralites home by March 2022, a peer-reviewed survey of 1,985 returnees (Rajan & Pattath, Asian Pacific Migration Journal, 2022) tested awareness and uptake of NORKA's flagship schemes. Only 27% of respondents had heard of the 2018 NORKA Rehabilitation Policy, and just 4% had used it; 84% were unaware of the NDPREM return-entrepreneur scheme, which only six people in the sample had used; and 92% were unaware of the national SWADES skills-registration scheme. Half of distressed returnees surveyed said they wanted to re-emigrate.
A separate 2025 academic review attributes part of the gap to "Monitoring and Evaluation Limitations" — NORKA does not systematically track career outcomes or measure programme return on investment — compounded by limited reach into rural districts and inconsistent coordination with destination-country authorities. Included as an honest, cautionary case: a long-standing, pioneering institution whose formal programme reach still falls well short of the population it was created to serve.

Read the full analysis: https://theaspd.com/index.php/ijes/article/download/10468/7507/21899