Deportations from the United States, and returns from irregular routes, bring Punjabis back to their villages having spent everything the family had and having failed.
In February 2025 a United States military aircraft landed at Amritsar carrying deportees, a substantial number of them Punjabi, in restraints, which was reported worldwide and caused a political row in India.
The families involved had in many cases sold or mortgaged land to fund the journey, at figures reported in the tens of lakhs per person.
Return in these circumstances is socially very hard. The village knows what was spent and the person has come back with nothing, and izzat operates against them.
There is no rehabilitation programme of any consequence, no counselling and no debt relief.
This is the underside of the emigration economy described elsewhere on this site and it involves several thousand families whose position is worse than before they started.
Return is more common than the emigration story allows. People come back when a permit ends, when a business fails, when a parent falls ill, or because the life abroad was not what was sold.
The returnee with money buys land and builds, which is visible. The returnee without money is not visible at all and is counted nowhere.
The deportation flights are the sharpest version of it. The men on them left on loans taken against land that now has to be sold.