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“NRIs are no longer Non-Resident Indians; they are Non-Returning Indians,” said Sanjaya Baru, as he held his latest book — Secession of the Successful: The Flight Out of New India — before the camera in his cosy New Delhi home.
Author and former media advisor to the late PM Dr Manmohan Singh, Baru is best known for several books on the intersection of Indian politics, the economy, and global affairs. His book on his time in office with Dr Singh — The Accidental Prime Minister — was also adapted into a highly controversial political film.
The topic of his latest book, however, offers several answers to one commonly asked question in present-day India: Why are more and more Indians migrating to other countries?
Over 23,000 millionaires have left India in the last decade, according to Morgan Stanley estimates, often seeking safer tax havens, better business environments, and freedom from what Baru calls a growing “surveillance raj.”
The middle class, too, is leaving in droves — not for wealth, but for dignity. “Ease of living is a huge factor,” Baru says, citing bureaucratic hurdles and poor public service delivery.
“Today, despite all the 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' chants, we cannot attract them (those living abroad) back,” he adds.
In this episode of Badi Badi Baatein, Baru critiques the state’s overt celebration of the diaspora, analyses the BJP-RSS’s attempt to turn the diaspora into a “Hindu vote bank,” speaks of rising communal tensions abroad, and reflects on the global fallout of India’s domestic politics.
What are the 4-5 key reasons that have led to this phenomenon and the rise of it in the recent past?
There are several reasons. You see, one must distinguish between PIOs and NRIs because PIOs' history is very different. So, I am not talking about them.
The point I make is that NRIs, we used to think of NRIs as non-resident Indians. And what they have now become are non-returning Indians. So, the definition of NRI has changed; they are non-returning Indians. And your question is, what accounts for this kind of several factors? First, the most important factor is that opportunities around the world are increasing, and Indians are able to take advantage of those opportunities, both in terms of academic opportunities, research opportunities, as well as business opportunities. So, you have both brain drain and wealth drain. And I make the point that in the 70s and 80s, when people actually started moving, or professionals started moving, or even workers to the Gulf, they were essentially a kind of a brain drain or a skill drain. But what we are now seeing in the last decade or so is a growing wealth drain, the rich Indians leaving India, moving in fact to places like even Singapore and Dubai, apart from the US and Europe. So, the opportunities are there, and Indians are taking advantage of those opportunities.
The second factor is that India as an economy, is often not able to absorb the talent that it creates. We create hundreds and thousands of doctors and engineers, but our system the way in which it has now been structured, is unable to absorb them. In fact, even workers, you look at what has happened just in the last one year, we have started exporting labor to Israel, where, because of the war, the Israelis are not hiring Palestinian workers and are reaching out to India for Hindu workers. And we are ready to supply labor. And the foreign minister has recently launched an initiative called Global Access to Talented Indians, which is in fact exporting talented Indians. So, there is a supply of Indians globally and there is demand for Indians.
When supply meets demand, people are going out.
One of the aspects that you pointed out and I quote from the book where you said, one of the reasons to escape is to look for safer tax havens and get away from an intrusive state and surveillance Raj. Are other countries really that much of a tax haven for rich urban elite Indians as compared to India?
Well, look, this is a top segment of those who are leaving India. Not everybody leaves for tax reasons, but it's the really wealthy, the millionaires. There's an estimate, I think Morgan Stanley did an estimate, 23,000 millionaires have left India in the last decade. This is a large number. And for many of them, tax is a factor. And there are many countries in the world where you have much lower rates of tax or even zero tax, like in the Gulf. So, you go to a zero-tax country, or you go to a country with a lower rate of tax, and you don't actually move fully. You just become a non-resident Indian for a certain part of the year, you're based abroad, and you pay those lower rates of tax. Some countries are beginning to plug this loophole, England, for example. But there are others who, you know, there are all the tax havens, Cayman Islands or Cyprus or, you know, there's so many other tax havens apart from countries like in the Gulf, which have virtually low or zero rates of tax.
There has been a lot of concern around India becoming a surveillance state more and more with the present times. How important is that factor when it comes to people's decision making of moving abroad? And what is the section of society which majorly thinks about it that way?
So, this whole issue of surveillance, regulation, excessive government kind of oversight is a problem that businesses have begun to face increasingly. And you do find a lot of distinguished businesspersons relocating outside the country. So, that factor is certainly there. Now in terms of numbers, it may not be much, and I don't want to exaggerate the numbers there, but certainly it's a factor. But I think the larger issue, which is not just about the rich or the super-rich, it's about the middle class, which is the dominant section of those who are leaving India. And there, the factor really is ease of living. In fact, I draw attention to the fact that prime minister Narendra Modi spoke about the need for improved ease of living in his last Independence Day speech, August 2024. It's not yet one year. I have not heard what has been done in terms of meeting that objective. The Prime Minister announces an objective, and yet we don't know what has happened 10, 11 months later. But I think that is very important. Whoever put that idea into speech must be complimented. Because of simple things like KYC in the banks, every year you're having to fill these forms, or getting your Aadhaar card address changed in the Aadhaar card or just getting your pension for elderly senior citizens. There are any number of, you know, day-to-day kinds of needs of Indians, of middle-class Indians, where the governmental system is driving them crazy. And ease of living means making it, you know, easier to pay your taxes, making it easier to commute, making it easier to, you know, deal with your public utilities, which in many other parts of the world are easily manageable.
For a lot of people, it's ease of living. For a lot of people, it's about education and settling abroad. For a lot of people, for example, the queer community, it's about getting legal rights, marriage rights, etc. There are scores of reasons why people leave their own country and move abroad. Do you think these factors are being addressed adequately to keep the people, the manpower that we have, within the country?
Not adequately.
Certainly, some state governments are beginning to address. If you go to a place like Hyderabad, which is my home city, or Chennai, living conditions are improving. And that is also aimed at attracting back a lot of the NRIs who are coming to work in. So, at the margin, there is some improvement, and people are addressing. But there is a larger issue, which is what I draw attention to. Because it is not as if India was such an easy place to live, even in the 50s and 60s. And yet, the spirit of that time, what we used to then call the new India, post-independence, actually attracted talented people back home. I mean, whether it was Homi Baba or H. N. Sethna or Vikram Sarabhai or the many economists in the Delhi School of Economics, K. N. Raj, Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, so many people in different professions came back because they were interested in participating in the project of building a new India, a free India, a post-colonial India. Why is that not there today? There is so much nationalism, right? We all talk about India, 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', all this nationalism business. And despite all that sentiment, the country is not actually able to attract back people. Because then they compare what their lifestyle, wherever they are, with the lifestyle likely to be here. And that is where ease of living becomes important.
Speaking of the diaspora, you know, for years, for successive governments, for any country, the diaspora acts as a soft power across, especially in the Western powerful nations. You have strongly criticized the children of, say, bureaucrats or government officials or people in the armed forces. You have said that it's a little, it's not safe for the country or the country's future that children of these people are choosing to study and also settle abroad eventually. Why do you say that?
I say that it raises a question. When the next generation of your elite, your power elite—you know, across the board, business, government, diplomacy, armed forces, academia, the power elite of the country, right—when the next generation has decided to leave this country, and it's only the generation which is now in office in their 50s or in their early 60s awaiting retirement that is here taking important decisions for this country, I raise this question: what is the personal stake that they have in the future of this country when their own children have no stake? Their children have migrated. They have left the country. So, you know, it's a question. I'm not accusing all of them of not having a stake. I'm not accusing anybody. But I think it's an important question to ask. Because when you say overseas Indians are my soft power, there's a different way of looking at it. If I'm an Englishman living in London and I see all these overseas Indians, I would say to myself, look, these guys have left India. They've come to my country because my country is better. So, what is that soft power of yours? You are seen as someone that people are abandoning.
Taking from your point of globalised nationalism, you have detailed the role of the VHP and the RSS over the past few decades in reaching out to the Indian diaspora abroad. But what you have also highlighted is that more than unifying the Indian diaspora abroad, it's more about unifying the Hindu diaspora abroad. How much do you think bodies like VHP or RSS have been able to unify the global Hindu in other countries?
Well, they have worked at it. They have done so. We see that mobilization, the fruits of that mobilization over the last decade. I mean, all these rallies of so-called diaspora of overseas Indians that prime minister addresses across the world, they are essentially rallies being organized by these groups. It's not just that there is an amorphous group of overseas Indians who feel so excited that the Indian Prime Minister has come to their country and land up at their port and wave flags. No, it's all very organized. The Howdy Modi in Houston was organized by 100 associations.
The names of them were mentioned on a website. Unfortunately, that has been removed. But a large number of them are community-based Indian groups, right? And all these groups have been built systematically in different parts of the world. And I have recorded that. In fact, there's a very good book, which I have quoted in my book on this history of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh HSS and the foreign department of the RSS and the VHP. From country after country, from Fiji to Mauritius to South Africa to the Caribbean to the United States, everywhere, there was a phase in the 90s when all of them went.
And I argue that even Prime Minister Vajpayee's decision to have this Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas and have this annual event was part of this whole effort at unifying, you know, overseas Indians in the name of unifying Hindus in the name of overseas Indians. And that's very much a strategy. And it seems to be working for them in the sense that now there are very active Hindu lobbies.
In the US, for example, people now refer to a Hindu vote bank, right? In England, when Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, they said, oh, the Muslims are voting for the Labour Party. The Hindus are voting for the Conservatives because of Hindus. And Rishi Sunak, if you remember, went around doing puja to British cows, you know. So, you know, he was also pandering to this sentiment. So, it has become a factor all over the world.
Local politics and big events locally that happened in India, the footprints are seen in among the politics of the diaspora abroad. When CAA protests happened, you had anti-CAA protests being held across various strategic locations across the country by certain sections of the diaspora. And India Day Parade in New Jersey, where the presence of a bulldozer along with CM Yogi Adityanath's photo became a huge thing. So, local politics does impact the politics of the diaspora.
Do you think this politics, this penetration of local politics more and more into the diaspora has increased over the recent years after the influx of social media or was this something which has always been a factor for the diaspora?
No, it has certainly increased. It's not just because of social media. It is because of a systematic political initiative of the BJP as a party and the RSS internationally. You mentioned one example of the bulldozer and these rallies in the US. But you know, these kinds of rallies are themselves creating a lot of tension locally. And that is in fact a problem for Indian diplomacy. That what you thought was a bridge has become a challenge. You thought your diaspora was your diplomatic weapon or instrument, but it's becoming a diplomatic challenge. So, that is one issue I draw attention to. But I think more recently we have had even a starker challenge when Indian government agents have been accused of assassinating a Khalistani activist in Canada and in the UK. Or planning in the US but actually conducting it in Canada. Now, this issue, which is in the American courts, it's a huge embarrassment for India. They have named the Indian Home Minister. And they have named officials of government agencies. This is unprecedented. So, taking domestic politics and security challenges overseas and imagining that we can actually handle this. In my judgement, it was an extremely bad decision of the intelligence agencies and of the government system. For which we have paid a price. We have already paid the price in terms of the image of this country. And in terms of how much people are willing to believe you. Even in Operation Sindoor, the global skepticism about the facts of that operation, which we see in the media, in the Western media, is partly fed by this. That you guys are now, you know, fudging stuff. You guys are doing stuff, which is not kosher, to use a Jewish phrase.
The perceived communalization of the diaspora has not come without consequences. We have seen attacks on temples in Canada, US. The alleged killing of a Sikh militant in Canada. Do you think there is a concentrated effort to communalize the diaspora abroad?
Well, I think there is. Whether there is an effort or not, that's the consequence. There has been a communalization. When we talk about a Hindu vote in America or a Hindu vote in Britain, then you know that you have communalized the vote. Right? So, whether it was done consciously or that is a product of the politics or diplomacy we have pursued is a different issue. But I think that this is becoming a challenge. And changing global perceptions of the diaspora. In fact, I have referred to a book which looks at this. That there was a period in which the Indian Americans were seen as the ideal immigrant community. And Devesh Kapoor has written a very good book on this. Looking at the data on this. That Indians are the most educated. The Indian American is the most educated immigrant group. Better educated even than local American Americans. That Indian Americans are, you know, in a higher income bracket. They do get better jobs, better paid. They are peace-loving. They are devoted to their family. You know, they like their children to go to good schools. Etc., etc. So, there is a very, very positive image of the Indian American. The middle-class Indian who went overseas to work, to study, to live a happy life, etc., etc. That is today being challenged. That perception is changing when you see Indian Americans either get into communal conflicts or project individuals like what is happening in UP as a great strength for India. That, you know, you are actually demeaning your own country by doing this. And that is changing perceptions about, you know, these Indian Americans. I think this is a recent phenomenon. And maybe it's partly to do with the social background of those who have been migrating in the recent past. As opposed to those who migrated in the more distant past.
There is a very interesting term in the book you have mentioned called Yankee Hindutva. But more interesting than that is how it has been defined, and I would like to read that out. It is defined as social media-based efforts to reinvent the idea of overseas Indians each night after having sold their souls to corporate America during the day.
That's actually a quote from, Vijay Prashad. It's a very good book. The title of the book is Yankee Hindutva. And I have actually quoted him. And it's true. These are Indians living in the United States working for American multinationals and boosting the global competitiveness of the American economy. In fact, I have a chapter which is titled Indians in MAGA. Indians in Making America Great Again. Now MAGA is Donald Trump's slogan. He wants to make America great again. But you look at the Indians we celebrate. I come from Hyderabad public school. My school celebrates the greatest alumnus Satya Nadella. A nice guy. I know him. I knew his father and father-in-law. But the fact is that you know he is helping in the global competitiveness of an American multinational. Not building an Indian multinational. Right. And there are thousands of such people who are facilitating the growing, who are ensuring global competitiveness of the American economy. When it is being challenged on the one hand by China and on the other hand by other developing countries, including India. So that's the point Vijay Parshad makes, that you might say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' in Madison Square Garden. But when you get to work, you are saying America Ki Jai. Right. Because that is what you are celebrating with your work.
The weaponization of the Indian immigration system whenever the local regime faces criticism abroad on foreign soil. We have seen people's OCI statuses being revoked several times. It has made headlines. How does this weaponization exactly happen?
Oh, it's very simple. They withdraw the OCI card. Because the government has taken the view that I have given you this card and I can withdraw it. And that is the difference between dual citizenship and OCI status. Because when you have dual citizenship, you have a citizenship. The Government of India cannot withdraw your citizenship. But if you have simply an OCI card, which entitles you to all the privileges of an Indian citizen except you can't vote in an Indian election and you can't sell agricultural property or whatever. There are one or two caveats. So finally, when OCI was introduced, they said, oh, it's like a dual citizen. I am saying sorry it's not. Because OCI is an entitlement given to you by the government. Which the government can withdraw. Which it has done in the case of some scholars or journalists overseas. Because they have been critical of the government, not because they are critical of India. But because they are critical of the current regime.
In the recent years we have seen a lot of reports of something called as 'dunki roots'. There is a lot of desperation among scores of Indians, especially in places like Gujarat and Punjab, to want to go abroad no matter what it takes. There are people resorting to illegal means. There are people facing deportation. They are being detained at the borders. At times, in several instances, we have seen that families have lost their lives at borders. We have seen instances in which people are selling their agricultural land, which can very much generate employment and, you know income for them here. But no, we want to go abroad no matter what it takes. Where does this psyche come from?
Because there is a growing feeling that those who have left the country are better off. When you start celebrating the diaspora, which is what we have done. All these rallies around the world. And the prime minister says, 'oh we are all very proud of you, great Indians are doing well, ' etc. So, there is a feeling that, 'oh if I go abroad, maybe I will do better, I am not happy with where I am now, if I get out, I might do better.' I draw a parallel between the export of indentured labour during the British period, which everybody today attacks. The British imperialists they took these Indians out and Amitav Ghosh and all these books about the conditions on the ships on which they were sent. Many of them died along the way. They were badly treated, and when they landed in these islands like Fiji, Mauritius etc. They were treated like slaves. All that is true. But the fact is that those who were going were being told that your life there will be better than here. And I have recorded that. Agents who are what are called 'maistris', who go mobilise these labourers from villages in Bihar, villages in UP, Orissa, Andhra, etc. are going and telling these poor labourers or poor wage labourers or poor farmers that 'look, your condition here is so bad', you come on this ship; we will take you to a better land, and you will live better there.' How is it different from the way in which labourers went to the Gulf in the 1970s? And all these agents, touts who took them, saying, you will get more money and of course they were getting more money... but they were living in inhuman conditions. You know the condition of Indian workers in the Gulf in the 1970s and 1980s was no better than the condition of these indentured slaves in the islands. We don't make that point. But we are happy with the diaspora in the Gulf. So, I think the fact is that perception here is life is better there. And once that perception takes root, if I am desperate here, the only escape for me is to get there. And if somebody promises me a way out and the role that these agents, this dunki route, the role that these agents are playing in taking all these families even from a developed state like Gujarat to Nicaragua and to Mexico and jumping on the border and people dying on the border. How is it different from the role of the shipping agents, the maistris, who took labour from Bihar to Mauritius in the 19th century? It's the same role. That was an imperialist government. This is a democratic government. It's happening under the same government.