Paradise in the making

Really? Then why are more Indians than ever before so desperate to flee India?

Official India’s boastful buoyancy recalls a story that did the rounds in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was the US president, and East Europe not yet chanting Mikhail Gorbachev’s mantra of glasnost and perestroika. It was said in those days of ideological rigour that a Pole applied to the authorities for permission to apply for a passport. “Why?” they asked. He wanted to visit the US. “Why?” He wanted to attend Ronald Reagan’s funeral. “Reagan isn’t dead,” they retorted. “The decadent capitalist West holds funerals only after death!” The man preferred to wait in the US than in Poland for Reagan to die.

No Indian would dream of being so unpatriotic. They might have four years ago but that was before Narendra Modi announced “India’s surge towards becoming a five trillion dollar economy”, as an inspiring message from the Prime Minister’s Office reminds us. The PMO gloats over all the tectonic changes and the “massive transformation” since then, the “giant strides that seemed unimaginable” before that dawn when it became bliss to be alive. Corruption disappeared, business became easy, and “sanitation coverage” soared to “97 per cent”. Blame faeces-spattered pavements and roadside urinating on the errant 3 per cent. They will vanish when India becomes Congress-mukt Bharat.

Given this paradise in the making for the last four years, why are even more Indians than ever before so desperately anxious to flee India? Almost everyone would gladly drop everything and jump on modern India’s equivalent of the high road to England that was “the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees”, said Dr Johnson. For Indians, it’s probably Dubai or Qatar from where flights radiate in all directions. So much so that it’s become positively embarrassing not being an immigrant. “An Indian from India?” foreigners ask in astonishment on my travels abroad. “Never met one before!” I assure them there are plenty more where I come from, that all Indians don’t yet live in New Jersey or Southall. 

“India had the most outward migrants in 2017 (17 million) followed by China (10 million) and Bangladesh (7.5 million)”, says the Asian Development Bank (ADB). That puts an altogether different gloss on the other proud boast that we lead the world in remittances. Yes, we do, but there are two reasons why the $80 billion that Indian expats send back far surpasses the savings of Chinese, Filipino, Mexican, Nigerian, Egyptian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Vietnamese migrants. First, India’s diaspora is the world’s biggest. Second, much of this money comes from the Persian Gulf region where some 8.5 million Indians slave away without being allowed to let down roots or even invest locally. They have no choice but to send their money to wife and village.
 

They are not lordly professionals who entertain Donald Trump, flaunt the Republican Hindu Coalition’s colours, root for the Bharatiya Janata Party and whisk their investments away at the least hint of risk, as Indo-Americans did during the Gulf War, pushing India almost into bankruptcy. Gulf Indians are even worse off than the 3.1 million Bangladeshis, 1.1 million Pakistanis and half a million Nepalis for whom “foreign” means India. Of course, neither group compares with globe-trotters who are applauded for serving the nation by trotting the globe (92 nations in 55 months at a cost of Rs 2,021 crore) at the taxpayer’s expense.

Not being migrants, they are as immune to push and pull as a Vijay Mallya or a Lalit Modi. They can decide which country to drop in just as a billionaire like Mehul Choksi can buy foreign citizenship, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms. Actually, pull doesn’t come into it much. It’s said the Chinese go wherever there is land and water. So strong is the push from a country that offers neither job nor income nor health care that any Indian who can rustle up the price of passport, visa and ticket is just glad to shake the dust of Bharat Mata off his feet.

Worried by “calls from high places”, the makers of the film, Fanney Khan, portraying a cab driver’s dreams, hastily changed the song, Acche din kab aayenge, to Acche din ab aaye re. They were right. Necessity might condemn hapless Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and Nepalis to seek a livelihood in impoverished India but the ADB comfortingly assures us that regional migration is declining. Lucky Indians can now be choosy about where to go. Anyone who says Acche Din is like “Jam tomorrow” in Alice through the Looking Glass is four years out of date.