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Pampering the prodigal son: Hindustan Times
New Delhi, June 20: It is not easy being an average, middle-class Indian. However gifted or hard-working you may be, it is difficult to get admission into a good school or college.
New Delhi, June 20: It is not easy being an average, middle-class Indian. However gifted or hard-working you may be, it is difficult to get admission into a good school or college.
It is even tougher getting a decent job thereafter, in which you can prove yourself. And even if you manage to prove yourself, it is virtually impossible to succeed and become independent, to earn your first million dollars from your enterprise. No wonder there are only 50,000 dollar millionaires in India. One out of 20,000.
Now compare that with the US where there are 1.8 million Indians. Yet you have 200,000 millionaires there, according to Merrill Lynch. This means one out of nine Indians is a millionaire, making us the richest immigrant community. The locals average a measly one in 160. In Britain, one out of 30 Indians is a millionaire. In West Asia, one out of 150, simply because Indians there are largely professionals and unskilled labour who go there to escape the tyranny of joblessness at home. They are not soldiers of fortune. They are escapees from grinding poverty.
This means that even though the scene may appear more competitive overseas, it is actually easier to go out there and make quick money. There are more jobs available, more opportunities to set up small businesses and swiftly grow them without the State stepping in to overtax you. That is why so many Indians pack up their bags and leave every year, to seek their fortunes abroad. Not just in the first world but anywhere, where skills are in short supply and not too many people work hard and take the kind of entrepreneurial risks that we are so good at. While this is indeed an admirable trait among those who have migrated overseas, there are many infinitely braver and more talented people who have chosen to stay back and pursue their destiny here. They have contributed to the emergence of a new India that is now acknowledged as a world-beater in many areas.
Yet, ever since reforms picked up pace, the government and the media have anointed the NRIs as the heroes of modern India. You read glowing reports about their success stories, how they have fought poverty and racial prejudice to emerge rich and powerful in the countries where they live. You read dazzling stories about their wealth and influence, the deeply conservative family life they live, the traditional values they cherish, the donations they make to build temples out there and colleges here, in the towns they grew up in. For years, these NRIs have supported groups in the Sangh parivar as well as the Congress — in the hope of influencing government policy.
In return, we have bestowed upon them huge favours. Dual citizenship is the new example. This means they can remain Indians and yet become citizens of their adopted homeland. To encourage them to invest in India, we have given them tax shelters, offered them rates of interest that no other country is ready to match, issued them special bonds to mop up undeclared cash, built pretty little townships beside the sea so that they can come back one day and retire in the land of their birth. They have quietly emerged as an extremely privileged and influential group lobbying for more and more power, more and more recognition, more and more say in matters of governance. They have an ambassador of their own. There is a commission to look after their needs and demands. Now they are seeking representation in Parliament. At this rate, they could well ask for a state of their own! These soldiers of fortune who once fled this country are now clamouring to become the first citizens of the new India you and I have built with the sweat of our brow.
As a result, we are creating a parallel citizenry. Of people who slunk away in search of a better life elsewhere and now believe that they are a superior race simply because they have earned more money in one lifetime than most of us will see in a million. So they are eager to come back here and teach us how to become a first world nation. The funny thing is that the government is not just listening to them but also steadily empowering them, in the mistaken belief that they are bringing something of value to India.
The truth is: they have nothing to offer us. The $ 80 billion we have in our reserves have not come from them. It has come from foreign investors who see a future in India. All we get from our NRIs is gratuitous advice and boastful success stories that we can easily do without. They need India. India does not need them. They need the emotional anchoring this great country offers — even as they make their millions elsewhere. Instead we should respect those thousands of untrained and unskilled workers who slog as slave labour in West Asia and send their earnings back home while they eke out their miserable lives in dormitory quarters, living on a pittance.
They are the ones who have built our dollar reserves and yet they are harassed and cheated at the airports when they come home every three years with a few cheap electronic goods for their friends and family. They are the ones we look down upon. When they are cheated by travel agents and body shoppers, deprived of their visas by overseas employers, harassed in the airport by corrupt customs officers, we look away simply because they are poor and illiterate. Instead, we suck up to those who are neither loyal to India nor the country of their adoption and want to straddle both worlds. In the process we are encouraging a bunch of selfish, greedy, opinionated, pompous self-seekers who believe they are smarter than you and me who have chosen to stay back in our homeland and brave its many problems — simply because we believe in India. Unfortunately, the government — in a repast of the famous tale — prefers to pamper the prodigal son and ignore the loyal, steadfast one who remained to look after the family. For parents, funnily, love those children who run away — only to come back one day and claim the family silver.
It is even tougher getting a decent job thereafter, in which you can prove yourself. And even if you manage to prove yourself, it is virtually impossible to succeed and become independent, to earn your first million dollars from your enterprise. No wonder there are only 50,000 dollar millionaires in India. One out of 20,000.
Now compare that with the US where there are 1.8 million Indians. Yet you have 200,000 millionaires there, according to Merrill Lynch. This means one out of nine Indians is a millionaire, making us the richest immigrant community. The locals average a measly one in 160. In Britain, one out of 30 Indians is a millionaire. In West Asia, one out of 150, simply because Indians there are largely professionals and unskilled labour who go there to escape the tyranny of joblessness at home. They are not soldiers of fortune. They are escapees from grinding poverty.
This means that even though the scene may appear more competitive overseas, it is actually easier to go out there and make quick money. There are more jobs available, more opportunities to set up small businesses and swiftly grow them without the State stepping in to overtax you. That is why so many Indians pack up their bags and leave every year, to seek their fortunes abroad. Not just in the first world but anywhere, where skills are in short supply and not too many people work hard and take the kind of entrepreneurial risks that we are so good at. While this is indeed an admirable trait among those who have migrated overseas, there are many infinitely braver and more talented people who have chosen to stay back and pursue their destiny here. They have contributed to the emergence of a new India that is now acknowledged as a world-beater in many areas.
Yet, ever since reforms picked up pace, the government and the media have anointed the NRIs as the heroes of modern India. You read glowing reports about their success stories, how they have fought poverty and racial prejudice to emerge rich and powerful in the countries where they live. You read dazzling stories about their wealth and influence, the deeply conservative family life they live, the traditional values they cherish, the donations they make to build temples out there and colleges here, in the towns they grew up in. For years, these NRIs have supported groups in the Sangh parivar as well as the Congress — in the hope of influencing government policy.
In return, we have bestowed upon them huge favours. Dual citizenship is the new example. This means they can remain Indians and yet become citizens of their adopted homeland. To encourage them to invest in India, we have given them tax shelters, offered them rates of interest that no other country is ready to match, issued them special bonds to mop up undeclared cash, built pretty little townships beside the sea so that they can come back one day and retire in the land of their birth. They have quietly emerged as an extremely privileged and influential group lobbying for more and more power, more and more recognition, more and more say in matters of governance. They have an ambassador of their own. There is a commission to look after their needs and demands. Now they are seeking representation in Parliament. At this rate, they could well ask for a state of their own! These soldiers of fortune who once fled this country are now clamouring to become the first citizens of the new India you and I have built with the sweat of our brow.
As a result, we are creating a parallel citizenry. Of people who slunk away in search of a better life elsewhere and now believe that they are a superior race simply because they have earned more money in one lifetime than most of us will see in a million. So they are eager to come back here and teach us how to become a first world nation. The funny thing is that the government is not just listening to them but also steadily empowering them, in the mistaken belief that they are bringing something of value to India.
The truth is: they have nothing to offer us. The $ 80 billion we have in our reserves have not come from them. It has come from foreign investors who see a future in India. All we get from our NRIs is gratuitous advice and boastful success stories that we can easily do without. They need India. India does not need them. They need the emotional anchoring this great country offers — even as they make their millions elsewhere. Instead we should respect those thousands of untrained and unskilled workers who slog as slave labour in West Asia and send their earnings back home while they eke out their miserable lives in dormitory quarters, living on a pittance.
They are the ones who have built our dollar reserves and yet they are harassed and cheated at the airports when they come home every three years with a few cheap electronic goods for their friends and family. They are the ones we look down upon. When they are cheated by travel agents and body shoppers, deprived of their visas by overseas employers, harassed in the airport by corrupt customs officers, we look away simply because they are poor and illiterate. Instead, we suck up to those who are neither loyal to India nor the country of their adoption and want to straddle both worlds. In the process we are encouraging a bunch of selfish, greedy, opinionated, pompous self-seekers who believe they are smarter than you and me who have chosen to stay back in our homeland and brave its many problems — simply because we believe in India. Unfortunately, the government — in a repast of the famous tale — prefers to pamper the prodigal son and ignore the loyal, steadfast one who remained to look after the family. For parents, funnily, love those children who run away — only to come back one day and claim the family silver.