Return of the Non Resident Indian

Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (446 BCE) once said “A man’s homeland is wherever he prospers”.  Recently I have been thinking about my homeland a lot.  I am not alone.  Millions of Indians including many of my friends are seriously considering winding up whatever they are doing and heading back to India.  This is a tough decision to say the least particularly if family members and children are involved.

I dislike the word Non Resident Indian (NRI).  We do not use the term Non Resident Malayalee to describe a person from Kerala (who has family and property in Kerala) but lives in other parts of the country.  But whether I like it or not I am an NRI. NRI’s come in all different shapes and forms.  I left India in the early nineties and came to the United States to do my Master’s degree.  I never went back.

I always ponder about why I decided to come to the United States in the first place.  My family was very well off by Indian standards and I was not particularly interested in doing a Master’s degree.  I think to some extent it was peer pressure.  I was very fortunate to attend a prestigious engineering school and it was very common those days for most of the graduating class in such institutions to pack their bags and get on a plane to the United States a few weeks after graduation.

I really did not think about the long term consequences of that decision.  It was almost as if it was the normal thing to do (almost 35 of the 43 member graduating class left for the US within the first year.  Thanks to the wonder called Facebook many of us are back in touch after almost 20 years).  I came, I saw, I conquered but now I want to go back!!  I think I know what Alexander was going through after he captured India 2300 years ago!!

I have always maintained my contact with India.  I have visited India on numerous occasions and enjoyed every one of them (except the one time when I had to drop everything and rush to India upon learning that my father had passed away).  The diversity of India, the chaos of everyday life, the languages and culture, the co-existence of the old and new are some of the things that fascinated me even when I was in India and still does today.

I believe that I am living in a time capsule.  When I left, India was trying to deal with the Bofors scandal and the financial meltdown (Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had just shipped most of India’s gold reserve to the Bank of England as collateral for new loans).  The country was trying to get some sort of recognition from the West after ending up on the losing side of the cold war.

Today the British Prime Minster is in India to save his own country!!  India’s foreign exchange reserve is one of the largest in the world.  Pessimism has been replaced by optimism and to an extent over confidence.  A generation that preached “unity in diversity” has now been replaced by a generation that believes in “my way or the highway”.

Why do Indians want to return to India now?  Actually Indians have always returned to India in the past after living lengthy periods of times abroad.  But the number of people leaving was always greater than the number of people returning.  But this is beginning to change.  Some people get old and feel that they prefer to retire in India than in the West, others might want to invest their savings and use the interest income and live a comfortable retired life and finally the permanent residency (Green Card) and citizenship requirements are getting tougher and the waiting periods are getting longer so some of the newer immigrants would rather go home than wait.

But there are other reasons as well.  Although many Indians are returning to India it does not mean that they are leaving “leaving” their adopted nations.  Many returning NRI’s still hold on to their immigration status (citizenship or green card), they may have bank accounts, houses and investments outside of India, bank accounts in India in foreign currency and they still might travel frequently between India and their other “home” country.  All this is possible because of the tremendous changes in Indian law in the past 14 years.  Indians no longer have to choose.

The loosening of the law has benefits for the NRI and for India.  The remittances from NRI’s to India are rapidly growing (NRI remittance is India’s single biggest source of foreign exchange.  The remittances every year is larger than India’s total IT exports and is larger than India’s total trade with the United States).  Remittance from Chinese immigrants and returning Chinese immigrants propelled the Chinese economy in the 1990’s).  India is copying the same model.

What is in store for people like me when we return?  Will India accept us as one of its own?  Can we make a positive impact on the nation?  Will we be happy in the end?

“Home is not where you live but where they understand you“  – Christian Morgenstern

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4. You Are Welcome Mr. Prime Minister
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Tags: Aristophanes, bank, Bofors, British, Chinese, citizenship, Facebook, government, Greek, green card, immigrants, India, Kerala, languages, Malayalee, Narasimha Rao, Non Resident Indian, NRI, Prime Minister, remittances, United States

Category: News & Government