In his speech, the prime minister traced what he characterized as four waves of Indian emigration: the first, in precolonial times, featured Indians leaving our shores as travelers, teachers, and traders; the second involved the enforced migration of Indian labor as indentured servants of the British Empire; the third, the tragic displacement of millions by the horrors of Partition; and the fourth, the contemporary phenomenon of skilled Indians seeking opportunity and challenge in our globalized world.
I would probably divide the fourth wave further into two distinct categories: one of highly educated Indians, often staying on after studies abroad in places like the United States, and the other of more modestly qualified but even harder-working migrants, from taxi drivers to shop assistants, who for the most part see their migration as temporary and who remit a larger proportion of their funds home to India than their higher-earning counterparts. But in today's world both sets of “fourth wave” migrants remain closely connected to the matrbhumi (motherland): ease of communications and travel makes it possible for expatriates to be engaged with the country they left behind in a way that was simply not available to the plantation worker in Mauritius or Guyana a century ago. To tap in to this sense of allegiance and loyalty through an organized public gathering was an inspired idea of the previous government, one that the present government has built upon through its creation of a “one-stop shop” in the form of a dedicated ministry.
So I was mildly surprised by the cynicism of the many desi journalists who thrust microphones into my face during the weekend and asked me if it wasn't all a waste of time. “What does a conference like this actually achieve?” they wanted to know. “How is it useful?” This was 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 had been added in the wake of the tsunami.
Many shared the negativism of the journalists. “These NRIs have left the motherland and gone off to make their fortunes elsewhere,” wrote A. Mukesh. “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, “The money spent on celebrating the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas would be better spent reconstructing the fishing villages of Tamil Nadu.”
Now, with the greatest of respect to Mukesh, I would like to take issue with him (and others who have, in whole or part, echoed his arguments) on several points. First, I was not suggesting that India “owed” its NRIs anything, other than an occasion to affirm their Indianness. Second, 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 farflung outposts of the British Raj a century or more ago, and who return unburdened by any reason for guilt. Third, the reconstruction of fishing villages is, if I may be pardoned the metaphor, a red herring. The choice is a false one: the NRIs are as committed as any resident Indian to tsunami relief and have raised a great deal of money for the purpose. 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 the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), which bears the organizational burden entirely.
But I preferred to make a larger point: sometimes the real value of a conference lies in the conferring. Perhaps it is time we realized 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 business cards. Because when India allows its pravasis to feel at home, it is India itself that is strengthened.
After all, one can ask the core question: Why do NRIs matter to India?
The answer is 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’ growing prosperity are increasingly 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 $71,000 a year, the same as Japanese-Americans, but nearly $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. (Many are the ways, indeed, in which the Empire can strike back.)
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 here. A generation ago, in 1975, when I first traveled to the United States as a graduate student, 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 math and 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 that produces them. Let us not underestimate the importance of such global respect 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. And 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. But we shouldn't get carried away — overseas Indians still invest a lower proportion of their resources in India than overseas Chinese do in China. Encouraging them to do more — and giving them reasons to do more — is certainly a worthwhile task for the newly established ministry for overseas Indian affairs in New Delhi.
Which is why I was concerned to hear rumors that the government was contemplating reducing the frequency of the hitherto annual Pravasi Bharatiya gatherings to one every other year. I was quite sure that the minister and his mandarins had not road-tested the idea with a cross section of the attendees. My own conversations, across the board, left me in no doubt that 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?