New Delhi, Feb. 12: The foreign office is killing off three diaspora initiatives - a pension-cum-life insurance scheme, short term academic courses, and a business opportunities platform - a year after it took charge of overseas Indian affairs.

The government is claiming a poor response in shutting down the Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Suraksha Yojana (MGPSY) that offers Indian workers abroad insurance cover and a pension, and the Study India Programme that provides short term courses for Indian-origin foreign students.

Some of the work of the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre (OIFC), the third initiative, aimed at encouraging Indian-origin foreigners to explore economic opportunities in India, will now be performed by the department of industrial policy and promotion, officials said.

The pension programme represents the only such scheme available for the most vulnerable section of India's diaspora - frequently debt-ridden, blue-collar workers in West Asia - that includes a government contribution, analysts have cautioned.

Its failure to attract huge numbers of subscriptions has more to do with the refusal of both the previous Manmohan Singh government and the current Narendra Modi administration to popularise the scheme than with a lack of demand, they have added.

The Study India Programme is the only short-term academic scheme Indian offers the children of its diaspora, while over 90 per cent of the queries the OIFC has received over the past two years have involved worries of low income Indian workers abroad.

Shutting down these schemes together could roll back some of the tiny gains that India has made in recent years in trying to better insulate in particular its 7-million strong work-force in West Asia from the vulnerabilities of the oil market, heavy loans and difficult local laws.

"I've followed the MGPSY closely, and I can tell you there was never a serious intent on the part of the government to make it a success," K.V. Shamsudeen, chairman of the Dubai-based Pravasi Bandhu Welfare Trust, who has held financial literacy classes for Indian workers in the Middle East for over four decades, told The Telegraph over the phone. "These are the most vulnerable sections of our diaspora and they need a contributory pension scheme, which is exactly what the MGPSY offers."

Started in 2012, the MGPSY combines the benefits of a life insurance and a contributory pension for Indian workers in 17 countries - mostly in the Middle East - who do not have college education and need emigration clearance to leave India.

A male subscriber who deposits Rs 5,000 a year under the scheme - Rs 1,000 through the National Pension System and Rs 4,000 through the UTI Monthly Income Scheme - receives Rs 1,000 from the government as contribution towards his pension and Rs 900 towards the MIS each year.

Women get Rs 2,900 as government contribution annually -- Rs 2,000 for the pension and Rs 900 for the MIS. Subscribers also get free cover from the Life Insurance Corporation - Rs 30,000 in the case of natural death, Rs 75,000 in the case of unnatural death or permanent disability due to an accident, and Rs 37,500 for partial disability.

The investments need to be made for five years or the duration of employment abroad, whichever is shorter. On returning home, the worker gets the total sum in his or her MIS account, coupled with the interest earned, as a lump sum. The pension amount stays in his or her account, gathering interest, till the worker turns 60, at which point he or she gets in monthly.

For low-income earners who are often scrambling to pay off debts back home in India and lack insurance, the scheme offers an incentive to save -- because of the additional money that comes in from the Indian government.

Yet in four years, the scheme has attracted less than 300 subscribers, officials said, citing the figure as their reason for deciding to close the project down.

Interpreting this low number of subscribers to conclude the absence of a demand for a contributory pension scheme within the Indian diaspora in West Asia would be incorrect, Shamsudeen contended.

The ministry of overseas Indian affairs, which was merged with the foreign office last February, never had the budget needed to advertise and popularise the MGPSY in West Asia and in Kerala, the source of the largest chunk of Indian workers there, the officials said. The overseas ministry's budget typically hovered around Rs 100 crore at its peak.

That tiny budget meant the ministry was saddled with a conundrum -- a very successful scheme would mean more subscribers than the number for which its budget would allow pension contributions.

The merger of the ministry with the foreign office was expected to help the bureaucracy in charge of diaspora initiatives lobby better for more funds. But instead, the scheme is being culled. Workers will have compulsory insurance under a new plan - the Pravasi Bharatiya Bima Yojana - but no contributory pension plan.

The failure of the government to popularise the MGPSY before shutting it down drew concern from the Parliament panel on external affairs this week too.

"The committee hopes that such a decision has been taken by the government only after exhausting all its attempts to popularise the scheme and recommend that social security measures for the welfare of overseas Indian workers should be strengthened," the panel, headed by former junior foreign minister Shashi Tharoor, said in a report.

The Study India Programme offers Indian-origin foreign students - between the age of 18 and 26 -- access to summer courses at Indian universities, with the government paying 90 percent of their air fare, their tuition, and for their living expenses. A total of 70 students - from Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago, other Caribbean islands and South Africa - have so far benefited from this programme.

The foreign office is shutting the programme down arguing that it is similar to another scheme - the Know India Programme. But the Know India Programme - which also targets young Indian diaspora members - is not academic in nature, and involves familiarising visitors with the culture of different states.

With the OIFC, the government is contending that the DIPP is better equipped to handle investment facilitation for the Indian diaspora. But the OIFC did a lot more than smooth the path to investments in India. Last year, it held courses and offered internships in business and entrepreneurship for Indian diaspora leaders. And unofficially, it served as a call centre, answering queries from worried members of the diaspora.