Every year, over a million workers from India travel to various parts of the world in search of employment. India has a long history of sending workers across the globe via a network of private and state recruitment agencies. However, while earlier the Government of India intervened in a limited manner in the curation of labor migration through a paternalistic, protectionist system called emigration clearance, it has now changed course and become more proactive in its role of exporting labor to the world. Since 2015, the Indian government has sought to move to a more labor export-promoting structure, regulating the role of skilling and recruitment of Indian labor migrants. By studying this shift in approach, initially through a policy analysis of publicly available reports, I trace how the Indian state sets up what I call “the skill-migration ecosystem” to gain legitimacy within a multilevel governance system of skilling for migration at the federal and state levels to gain greater control of the migration management process. The state, using multilateral and bilateral norms and agreements, gains legitimacy both internationally and domestically by positioning itself as an ethical actor in the labor migrant market in opposition to private actors. Additionally, based on interviews conducted with multiple actors involved in the skilling and recruitment of migrant workers at the federal level and within two major migrant sending states of Kerala and Telangana, I find that the state utilizes its legitimate position to achieve three specific political and economic objectives, namely: 1) Protection/Surveillance; 2) Political; and 3) Economic. However, the fragmented nature of the migration management system across federal governments and agencies leads to federal tensions and incoherent outcomes in skilling and job placements for workers themselves.