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Non-Resident Indians or Non-Returnable Indians?

 

Text Box: Non-Resident Indians (NRI) or Non-Returnable Indians (NRI)? Which label should be applied to that vast and disparate pool of desis spread all over the world? Indians have been migrating for hundreds of years, and in the past 300 years they have migrated or have been transplanted to Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, Zanzibar, Jamaica, Panama, Canada, USA and UK. Many desis, who are NRIs, suddenly find themselves having to defend their Indianness. Neha a recent transplant from India to the UK, has been living this hyphenated existence (Desi-NRI), and having to defend her Indianness.  Now that you an NRI, you longer have the right to comment on anything about India discovers Neha. She is not alone. Many of us have been there, and done that, and have learnt to live with it. Becoming an NRI, or being labelled as an NRI is somehow thought to be an overnight transformation and you are expected to have a different take, perception on everything, and your comments on India are no longer correct or valid. It is like some kind of switch is flipped and a whole version of software is downloaded into your OS when you move to another country. You are now expected to behave and interact differently, but that is not how it happens.  Often, when people move from India they don’t cut off the umblical cord, the Indianness stays with them. In the 1960s and 1970s many people moved to India due to lack of opportunities. Time after time it is the same story that I heard from various entrepreneurs and engineers. For instance, a cousin of Vikram Seth’s once mentioned that he would have never left India for the US had he found a right job to match his education. He mentioned that he felt cheated of an opportunity to live with his extended family in India. That remark stayed with me because it resonated with me. Umang Gupta went back to India in the 1970s and made an attempt to live there. But after a year of livng in India, he went back to the US and created a new life. Umang currently heads Keynote Systems. He was the founder of Gupta Corporation, the first SQL database on a PC, and the man who wrote Larry Ellison’s first business plan. Bibi Sekhon of San Francisco migrated from her “pind” near Patiala in the late 1950s and had a hard time settling down in the US. “Bahuth okha tha pehla,” she often commented. (It was very difficult to live here in the beginning.) What kept her going was the tight-knit Punjabi community and her trips to the local Gurudwara. Over the years she sponsored her brother and sister to come and live with her in the US. Her rationale was that since she was unable to leave San Francisco, she could re-create the familiar environment of her childhood by having her brother and sister live with her. She missed India a lot, and yearned to go back and live in her “pind.” These are just a couple of stories, there are countless others who have said the same thing. For many, it was a Hobson’s choice. Better opportunities for study and growth were available outside India, and not in India. Leaving familiar surroundings, your home and family is never an easy thing to do. Creating a new home, starting a new life, a new job is very hard. Give it a try and you will then discover what it is like to live outside. It is not fun and money all the time. Thankfully, because of couple of key developments NRIs, who were once labelled as “Non-Returnable Indians,” have now found a way to go back to India. There are many opportunities available for them to go back and live and work in India. I got an opportunity a couple of years ago to be able to live in India, and spend time with family. “You have not changed at all. You still speak Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi?” I would often get asked. Hello! I moved to a different country, but I did not loose my ability to speak languages were some of the thoughts that went through my mind.  One of the things that took me by surprise was the number of NRIs returning to India. In hindsight, I should not have been surprised since a Citibank NRI manager pointed out in 2000 that the number of NRIs moving back is going through the roof. She was opening 30-40 accounts per week in her branch alone. Today, that number has increased by leaps and bounds. I wrote about the trickle of the NRIs to India in The Telegraph (Calcutta) a few months ago, and you can read about it here. Remember that corny line, “Once an Indian, always an Indian?” The same thing applies to NRIs too. “You can take a person out of India, but you can never take India away from him/her,” is another corny line I have heard again and again. Anyway who is an Indian? Who decides that? That is a whole new can of worms to explore…

Source:

http://kamlabhatt.wordpress.com/2006/02/07/non-resident-indians-or-non-returnable-indians/