Opinion Poor, middle-class, wealthy — more Indians than ever before are leaving the country

“Gujarat’s development journey has received tremendous praise both across India and the world” — claimed an April 2014 article titled ‘The Gujarat Model’ on the website narendramodi.in. It added, “Under Narendra Modi’s leadership Gujarat was known for its development oriented governance where the people were made active partners and stakeholders in the development journey.” Clearly, something has gone wrong this past decade.

If desperate Indians are jumping ship and bearing ordeals in search of decent livelihood, the country’s wealthy, the so-called “high net worth individuals” (HNIs), are buying golden visas to settle overseas. The London-based global citizenship and residence advisory firm, Henley & Partners, reported in 2022 that 7,500 HNIs had left India to take up residence and citizenship in a foreign country. The global investment bank, Morgan Stanley estimated that between 2014 and 2018 as many as 23,000 Indian millionaires had moved their principal home out of India.

The out-migration of the poor, the professionals and the wealthy has increased exponentially this past decade. While the poor become victims of touts and middlemen, professionals use their marketable talent to secure work visas and the wealthy simply buy their overseas citizenship. An increasing number of countries are selling citizenship to wealthy Indians.

Time was when Indians complained about enforced migration. Novelists and historians have written eloquently about the fate of “indentured labour”, lured from their villages with the false promise of a better life and then pushed into slavery and drudgery. That was British India. Then came the 1970s and 1980s when Indian labour was once again lured away with the promise of employment and higher income. In the event, many found themselves living in inhuman conditions in the non-democratic, feudal kingdoms of West Asia.

Interestingly, though, neither the indentured labour of the colonial era nor the working class in the Gulf region chose to return home. After 1947, the former were offered the option of taking up Indian citizenship, but most chose to live overseas. Over the years their lot, in countries as varied as Mauritius and Jamaica, has improved. Most are better off than their relatives back home in the villages of eastern India. In West Asia too, the working class fought for better living conditions but rarely opted to return home. Rather, they have been demanding dual citizenship and voting rights.

With over 20 lakh Indians migrating overseas every year, the regionally and professionally diversified Indian diaspora is now close to 30 million and non-resident Indians are now more than non-resident Chinese. Till recently, many NRIs retained their Indian citizenship. However, a combination of attractive citizenship policies in host countries and liberal outward remittance of foreign exchange have combined to increase the number of Indians taking up foreign citizenship.

Replying to a question in Parliament on July 21, 2023, India’s external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, stated that a total of 2,25,260 Indians had “renounced their Indian citizenship” in 2022. This compared to 85,256 in 2020. Taken together a total of 16,63,440 Indians had renounced their citizenship in the period 2011-22. In the first six months of 2023, the figure was already at 87,026. The minister then added: “The number of Indian nationals exploring the global workplace has been significant in the last two decades. Many of them have chosen to take up foreign citizenship for reasons of personal convenience.”

Many in government take the view that overseas Indians are an asset. A “brain bank” claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi. True, inward remittances into India have increased steeply to an all-time high of US$125 billion last year. These money inflows are not matched by “brain inflows” to justify the specious claim of overseas Indians being a “brain bank”.

“A successful, prosperous, and influential diaspora is an advantage for India,” the foreign minister claimed and added that the government’s efforts, “are particularly aimed at encouraging the exchanges of knowledge and expertise in a manner that would contribute to India’s national development.” Money inflows are there to be counted. Knowledge inflows remain nebulous, if not elusive.

If inhospitable conditions at home encourage poor and middle-class Indians to migrate, the fear of harassment by government agencies is driving wealthy Indians to go overseas. The rising demand for school education that enables securing admission overseas is only one indication of the middle class’s desperation to quit India.

Till now this phenomenon has been taken lightly by policy makers and analysts. After all, most of their children have already migrated. However, the out-migration of Indians is acquiring staggering proportions. It is partly shaped by the global shortage of people that has created demand for Indian labour and professionals. Equally, it is being shaped by a desire of many to migrate to a better, safer life, far away from Modi’s “New India”.

While the government is now discovering, in light of growing activism of religious extremists of all hues among overseas Indians, that the diaspora is as much of a liability as an asset, families that have children overseas are beginning to bear the burden of their absence, investing in old age homes. In all this, it is the wealthy who are having a ball — in Dubai, Singapore, London, Lisbon, Cayman Islands and other exotic places.

The writer was member, National Security Advisory Board (1999-2001) and Advisor to the Prime Minister of India (2004-08)