Industrial cranes, a ubiquitous sight on the UAE and dubbed its national bird, have stopped flying. A third of the crane population, working non-stop on high-rise buildings, have been grounded -- their wings clipped by the global meltdown. A decade's construction boom having suddenly gone bust, over one lakh people, mostly expatriates, have lost their jobs. S Muthuraman, a construction worker from Tamil Nadu, sold his wife's ornaments so that he could pay the travel agents who, he believed, will take him to a more prosperous future in Dubai. Today, with construction activity having come to a standstill, he has been asked to leave the UAE. "I have a debt of Rs 86,000 and I am returning to India with Rs5,000 in my hand," he says. Calicut's Madhusudhan Nair, a qualified lift engineer, is another victim of the meltdown in Dubai. The company he worked for is a sub-contractor for Nakheel, a construction major, which dumped 500 people last month, followed by another 300
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