Capital, not country

Jews, of course, have the most famous and extraordinary diaspora. The Chinese diaspora is the most talked about in recent times. That the Indian diaspora hasn’t quite made the cut, at least in comparison with the Chinese, is not because of the lack of initial conditions. Indians abroad are generally well-educated high-earners who are not up to any organised mischief. If all the investible resources and expertise haven’t quite translated into a transformative force in Mother Country, it is not terribly useful to talk of the NRI’s “lack of patriotism”. A question should be asked, instead, one whether we need to anything differently for NRIs to become more active economic participants, than should be the case for foreign investors in general? It seems pretty clear that the chief ministers, from Buddhadev Bhattacharjee to Narendra Modi, who have booked a seat at the high table of the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrations haven’t mulled over this.

If India’s FDI policy regime were transparent — any level of equity participation in any sector, with a very small, publicly known negative list — and given the current assessment of its economy, the colour, national origins and emotional links of the investor would have been largely irrelevant. That, in fact, is the case with China. For all the romance about Chinese Americans forging million dollar links with their cousins in the mainland, China’s FDI story is really about Western companies crossing the Great Wall. If the Indian policy regime has sometimes presented Himalayan problems, a solution to it will attract capital from all sources.

Therefore, the time and energy spent on special pleadings for NRI investment, as the chief ministers will do in Hyderabad, may actually be better spent if the key states and the Centre identified policy distortions and removed them quickly. The CMs gathered at the fourth NRI Day jamboree should remember one truth about capitalism: people with money will always go where money can be made, wherever the place is and whoever the people are.