Punjab’s ‘Donkey Flights’ to the world’s conflict zones

Widespread joblessness explains why Punjab’s migrants resort to desperate means to reach their final destinations.

Dunki in Punjabi means to hop, skip and jump from one place to another. It is also a corruption of the English ‘Donkey Flight’, a reference to inter-continental flights that carry illegal immigrants from Punjab to Europe and Central and South America.

A chartered flight operated by a Romanian carrier, Legend Airlines, carrying about 300 Indians, was intercepted in Paris last December on suspicion of carrying illegal immigrants to Nicaragua. The case brought to sharp relief the desperate means that Indians employ to emigrate to the US, UK and Canada but, more recently, even to conflict zones.