So I have been mildly surprised by the cynicism of the many desi journalists who thrust microphones into my face during these weekends and ask me if it isn’t all a waste of time. ‘What does a conference like this actually achieve?’ they want to know. ‘How is it useful?’ This is a remarkably utilitarian approach to the occasion, and I suppose I could have responded by pointing to the many parallel seminars being run by state governments to attract NRI investment, or the session on disaster management that was added one year in the wake of the tsunami. But I preferred to make a larger point: that sometimes the real value of a conference lies in the conferring. Perhaps it is time we realize that instead of counting how many new millions were raised for tourism in Rajasthan or pledged for reconstruction in Port Blair, we should appreciate how much it means to allow NRIs from sixty-one different lands the chance to share their experiences, celebrate their commonalities, offer their ideas and swap visiting cards. Because when India allows its pravasis to feel at home, it is India itself that is strengthened.
This is why I strongly and publicly opposed a move some years ago to reduce the frequency of the annual Pravasi Bharatiya gatherings to one every other year. My argument was clear: this would be a mistake, since the occasion has clearly acquired a momentum that it would be a shame to disrupt. When a locomotive has been gathering steam, why apply the brakes? The dialogue between India and its diaspora has only just begun, I argued: let us not interrupt it.
But it is fair to ask why NRIs matter to India and what would be gained by continuing what one critic called ‘a pointless jamboree’. ‘These NRIs have left the motherland and gone off to make their fortunes elsewhere,’ one Mr A. Mukesh wrote to me. ‘They have abandoned India. India does not owe them anything. Indeed, it is they who owe the country that has educated them and given them the opportunity to better their lives abroad.’ To Mukesh and others like him, the money spent on celebrating the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas would be better spent in the villages of India.
But I am not suggesting that India ‘owes’ its NRIs anything, other than an occasion to affirm their Indianness. And of course, while it is a fact that many, perhaps most, of the recent wave of Indian emigrants have benefited from a subsidized education in India before going off to make their living elsewhere, that is not true of many of the pravasis in attendance, who are descended from earlier waves of (often forced) emigration to the far-flung outposts of the British Raj a century or more ago, and who return unburdened by any reason for guilt. Finally, the needs of India’s villages are great but the choice is a false one: the NRIs are as committed as any resident Indian to India’s development, and have raised and remitted a great deal of money home for the purpose. (Non-resident Gujaratis, for instance, are prominent bulwarks of the ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ business summits that have helped steer investments to that state.) The expenditure on the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is not diverted from more worthwhile national causes, but is rather raised specifically for this purpose from sponsors, notably FICCI, which bears the organizational burden entirely.
To turn to the core question, then: why do NRIs matter to India?
Simple: as a source of pride, as a source of support, and as a source of investments. It is entirely natural for Indians to take pride in the successes of their erstwhile compatriots abroad. I once remarked rather cruelly to an interviewer that the only country where Indians as a whole did not succeed was India. That is fortunately no longer the case, as signs of Indians’ increasing prosperity are evident everywhere one travels in India, but Indians abroad have certainly given us all a great deal to be proud of. One recent statistic from the United States shows that the Indian-American family’s median income is nearly $75,000 a year, slightly more than Japanese-Americans’, but some $20,000 higher than the figure for all American families. That kind of success is not merely at the elite end of the scale: in England today, Indian curry houses employ more people than the iron and steel, coal and shipbuilding industries combined.
So we can be proud of the impact Indians have made on foreign societies. But pride is not merely an intangible asset. Living in the United States, I have been struck by the extent to which the success of our NRIs has transformed the public perception of India in the United States. A generation ago, when I first travelled to the United States as a graduate student in 1975, India was widely seen as a land of snake-charmers and begging bowls — poverty marginally leavened by exotica. Today, if there is a stereotypical view of India, it is that of a country of fast-talking high-achievers who are wizards at maths and who are capable of doing most Americans’ jobs better, faster and more cheaply in Bangalore. Today IIT is a brand name as respected in certain American circles as MIT or Caltech. If Indians are treated with more respect as a result, so is India, as the land which produces them. Let us not underestimate its importance in our globalizing world.
The presence of successful and influential NRIs in so many countries also becomes a source of direct support for India, as they influence not just popular attitudes, but governmental policies, to the benefit of the mother country. That two right-wing Governors of US states (Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal of Louisiana and Namrata ‘Nikki’ Randhawa Haley of South Carolina) are of Indian descent ought not really to make many liberal-minded Indians proud, but it does, because it adds to Indians’ sense of self-worth when they see ‘people like us’ in positions of international prominence. A Canadian provincial premier, Ujjal Dosanjh, several British Lords and lower-house parliamentarians, and even some members of the European Parliament hail from India and are no longer embarrassed to admit to their origins. One feisty former Canadian MP, Ruby Dhalla, is particularly popular in Indian political circles, which she frequents at least as often as her former ‘riding’.* They are welcomed in India as people who have achieved power abroad, which makes them all the more worthy of adulation here. And the role of Indians in their adopted countries’ politics goes beyond the handful who have achieved election to the many who stuff envelopes, run campaigns and especially raise funds for non-Indian politicians, which makes their views impossible to ignore. The contribution of well-heeled and politically active Indian-Americans to the shift in US policy from indifference to pro-Indianness in recent years simply cannot be overestimated.
But the idea of NRIs as a resource for India goes beyond whatever influence the elected leaders among them can exercise. I haven’t even mentioned NRI investments in India — from the remittances of working-class Indians in West Asia that have transformed the Kerala countryside to the millions poured into cutting-edge high-tech businesses in Bangalore or Gurgaon by investors from Silicon Valley. The remittances have been lifesavers for India during the global recession, because they kept increasing even as FDI nosedived. While FDI plummeted to just $19 billion in 2011, NRI remittances went steadily up from $25 billion in 2006 to over $46 billion in 2008–09, the first year of the recession, to $55 billion in 2009–10 and $57 billion in 2010–11. The faith of Indian expatriates in India has kept their money flowing homeward; the NRIs have become, in effect, the National Reserve of India.