The Dubai Brahma Kumaris' Centers in the United Arab Emirate
Dubai is a ultramodern metropolitan city built on oil money (by mainly Indian construction workers) and designed as a playground and luxury shopping center for the super rich, renown for its ski slope built in a desert and five, six, seven-star hotels. Indian comprise of 33% of the total population and over 50% of the work force (construction workers form around 43% of all foreign workers and built the above).
The Indian community is 1.4 million strong and in Dubai they comprise of over 60 percent of the city's population (also 1.4 million). So a BKWSU centers is more natural that it might seem. Especially as the non-resident Indians in UAE send back around $2 billion (US Dollars) through "normal banking channels" annually to India every year. No one is sure of how much through "usual channels".
An Indian community has been in the UAE for 300 years. The people of Sindh were the first settlers. Businessmen from the Indian subcontinent are the backbone of commercial activity in the UAE. Export, Import, supermarkets, electronics, jewelry ... Sindhis number about 35,000 (needs checking due to Indian number system, might be 350k).
They are the largest expatriate community in the UAE; unskilled workers; skilled and semi-skilled workers, professionals, such as doctors, Engineers, Accountants, employed in Government and private sectors and businessmen. Indians played a major role in the economic development of the UAE over the last 35 years. Professionals and technically qualified Indians are engaged in huge number in the knowledge-based sectors such as information technology. So far as business is concerned, it is engaged mainly in trading, especially in the numerous Free Zones in UAE
Religious activities in UAE are restricted except for Muslims and Christians which is probably why the Brahma Kumaris are not a religion there. In Dubai there is one Hindu Temple and one Gurdwara run by the Sindhi community.
Life is hell for most Indians but I do not suppose it is these that they are targeting or supporting. Forced to pay upfront to agents in order to find work, they are stripped of their passports, often unpaid for months on end, preyed upon by loan sharks. Many live four to a room in a rundown industrial section of Dubai called al Quoz. Most earn around $300 a month - about the same as the cost of staying one night in one of the luxury hotels they help build.
Recently, 4,000 Indian workers held in Dubai for violent protest over better pay. 26,000 Indians were among 100,000 illegal immigrants who left United Arab Emirates under a recent general amnesty. In 2006, 109 people including women domestic workers committed suicide. The number rose to 118 in 2007 and is rising.