ABSTRACT
The policy of the state has to be even-handed and ensure that individual success is correctly calibrated and used to guide the new emigrants. At first glance, individual success and its reinforcement from outside would seem to be self-contradictory. The workshop did increase the likelihood that migrant workers were making financial decisions jointly with their wives in India, but the interviews with migrants' wives reveal that migrants' and their wives' are often not perfectly aware of the saving and spending practices of their spouse. For that reason, the state cannot celebrate only the highly successful and take the modest, unglamorous victories of the aam pravasi for granted. The duty of the state and the policies it crafts may really be to take care of the inevitable losers in the emigration process. With the populous North Indian states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar joining the emigration game, such resources can be deployed outside the state.
