India must simplify rules for expat investors: Lord Paul

India needs to simplify its rules to make the expat community feel welcome in their homeland and encourage them to invest in the country to help shape its future, NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul said today.
Welcoming India's move to organise the first Regional Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas here, Paul said, "The world knows India largely through contact with its expat community and expat successes reflect well on India. India should appreciate that the expats are the global personality of India."
He also lauded the contribution of the Indian diaspora to the British/European societies and economies.
Paul said expats can contribute a lot to their mother country, but "it is singularly unfortunate that the biggest barriers to expat engagement with India have been erected by Indians themselves".

"Ever since 1980 the expats have been yearning to do more for India but sadly have been discouraged by some members of the establishment, some politicians and the local business community," he said.
Paul, the founder-Chairman of the Caparo Group, recalled that he was one of the first persons to substantially invest in India.

"This frightened the business community largely because this type of participation would soon expose the fact that they were running public companies like private fiefdoms. No corporate governance, no shareholders interest, no transparent financial reporting. Corporate abuse was rampant in most of those companies," he recalled.

"The so-called owners actually had very small shareholdings of their own and felt threatened when this became widely known. Therefore they began big lobbying campaigns to keep expats out and largely succeeded in doing so," Paul said and expressed hope that the new government would address concerns of the diaspora.
"We now have a one party government, and a prime minister who appears determined to make Indian expatriates feel welcome in their homeland. At the same time he has also declared his determination to stamp out corruption.
"I congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi on these initiatives. It was refreshing to hear his speech at Madison Square Gardens (in New York) last month. This prompted me to issue the statement 'Prime Minister Modi's decisions make the Diaspora feel truly welcome'," he said.

"India now needs to simplify the rules and make sure that all inward investment whether in infrastructure, business, health, education, research etc conforms to those rules. When it does not, it must be disallowed," Paul said.