Bridging Distances: How India Views Its Diaspora

For decades after independence, the Indian government maintained a notably detached relationship with its citizens living abroad. Emigrants were largely seen as people who had chosen to leave – and in doing so, had stepped outside the nation’s concern. That perception has shifted dramatically. Today, India actively courts its overseas community, frames them as strategic partners in national development, and has built an entire institutional architecture to engage them. Understanding how and why this shift happened reveals a great deal about how states recalibrate their relationship with diaspora communities over time.

Who counts as the Indian diaspora? 🔗

Before examining the state’s perception, it helps to understand how the Indian government categorizes its overseas population. The most widely used term is Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) – Indian citizens living outside India for more than 182 days a year. Distinct from them are Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs), who hold foreign citizenship but trace their roots to India. As of 2015, the PIO card scheme was merged into the Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) category, which now consolidates these identities under one status. As of January 2024, the Indian diaspora is estimated at approximately 35.42 million people, making it one of the largest in the world. Broadly, the government groups them into three categories: temporary workers in Gulf countries, skilled professionals in the Global North, and the “old diaspora” – descendants of indentured laborers in places like Mauritius, Fiji, and South Africa who migrated roughly 150 years ago.

The early years: detachment and suspicion 🔗

In the decades following independence, India’s official position on its diaspora was, at best, indifferent. Under Jawaharlal Nehru, ethnic Indians living abroad were effectively told to regard themselves as citizens of their host countries – not as an extension of the Indian nation. The policies of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s conveyed a clear message: the diaspora should not look to India, but should identify with local populations instead.

This detachment had real consequences. When approximately 300,000 Indians were expelled from Kenya in the late 1960s, the Indian government maintained that these events were “strictly a matter of domestic jurisdiction.” Similarly, when Idi Amin expelled 70,000 Indians from Uganda in 1972, India largely turned away. The prevailing ideology – shaped by non-alignment and Panchsheel principles – discouraged interference in other countries’ affairs, even when Indian-origin communities were directly affected.

At the same time, a growing wave of skilled emigration was being framed negatively at home. Doctors, engineers, and scientists trained in India’s publicly funded institutions were leaving for better opportunities abroad. This process came under severe scrutiny and shaped Indian public opinion against the affluent diaspora, who were seen as having benefited from state-subsidized education before abandoning the country. The term “brain drain” captured this resentment precisely.

The 1991 turning point: from burden to resource 🔗

The liberalization of India’s economy in 1991 marked the beginning of a fundamental rethink. Facing a severe balance of payments crisis, the government needed foreign exchange urgently. Finance Minister Manmohan Singh turned to non-resident Indians for help, issuing NRI bonds and offering special investment concessions to attract diaspora capital. This was not merely a policy tweak – it signaled a conceptual shift. The diaspora, previously seen as a drain on national resources, was now being recognized as a financial lifeline.

Migration became a strategy that countries adopted to achieve their own development goals, and India began courting its diaspora population by attracting remittances and foreign investment as a viable path toward national development. NRIs were offered exemptions from the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act and incentives to invest in high-priority industries. The shift was further driven by the visible success of the Indian diaspora in the United States – particularly in the technology sector – which changed how India perceived its emigrants: not as deserters, but as an untapped resource.

Institutionalizing engagement: key policy milestones 🔗

The Indian government’s engagement with its diaspora became increasingly structured from the late 1990s onwards, with a series of institutional initiatives that formalized what had previously been ad hoc outreach.

The High Level Committee and the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 🔗

The policy of actively reaching out to the Indian diaspora began during the tenure of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, when the government established a high-level committee under L.M. Singhvi. The committee’s 2001 report was a watershed moment. It reframed the diaspora not as a problem but as what Singhvi called a “National Resource of India” – a reservoir of capital, expertise, and goodwill that could be harnessed for mutual development. One of the direct outcomes of this report was the creation of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) in 2003, an annual – later biennial – convention held on January 9 to mark the return of Mahatma Gandhi from South Africa. The event brings together diaspora experts, policymakers, and professionals to network and engage with the Indian government. The theme of the 2023 convention, held in Indore, was “Diaspora: Reliable Partners for India’s Progress in Amrit Kaal” – a phrase that encapsulates the current governmental view of overseas Indians.

The OCI scheme and flexible citizenship 🔗

One of the most substantive policy responses to diaspora demand was the Overseas Citizenship of India scheme. In December 2003, parliament unanimously passed a bill to amend the Citizenship Act, and the OCI scheme was launched in August 2005. The scheme stopped short of granting full dual citizenship – which India does not permit – but gave OCI holders lifelong, multiple-entry visas to India, parity with NRIs on investment and education, and exemption from police reporting. By February 2012, over one million PIOs had registered as OCIs, reflecting the strong appetite among the diaspora for a formal connection to their ancestral homeland. In 2015, the PIO card was absorbed entirely into the OCI category, simplifying the membership structure.

The Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs 🔗

In 2004, a new Ministry of Non-Resident Indian Affairs was formed, later renamed the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA), which served as the nodal institution for investment, business partnerships, academic exchanges, and welfare of Indians abroad. In 2007, MOIA set up the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre (OIFC) in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), with a mandate to promote diaspora investment and facilitate business-to-business connections. The ministry was eventually merged back into the Ministry of External Affairs in 2016, signaling that diaspora engagement had become a core foreign policy function rather than a standalone concern.

The diaspora as economic engine: remittances and investment 🔗

The economic logic underpinning India’s changed perception is hard to overstate. According to the World Bank, India was the top recipient of remittances in 2024, with an estimated inflow of $129 billion – more than double what it received just a decade earlier. Remittances to India stood at $125 billion in 2023, up from $69 billion in 2017. These flows represent roughly 3% of India’s GDP and have consistently outpaced foreign direct investment as a source of external financing.

Beyond remittances, the diaspora acts as an ‘agent of change’ – facilitating investment, accelerating industrial development, and boosting international trade and tourism. The role of the Indian diaspora in the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Deal, where ethnic Indians in the United States successfully lobbied for the agreement, is frequently cited as an example of the diaspora functioning as a foreign policy asset. In this sense, the state’s perception has expanded from seeing the diaspora purely as an economic contributor to recognizing it as a diplomatic force – what scholars describe as “diaspora diplomacy.”

Cultural engagement and soft power 🔗

India’s engagement strategy has not been limited to economics. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) runs 30 Indian Cultural Centers around the world, focusing in countries with sizeable Indian populations on teaching Indian dance, music, languages, and yoga, and organizing national days and festivals. The Know India Programme (KIP) is a flagship initiative that familiarizes Indian-origin youth between 18 and 30 years of age with their roots and contemporary India, fostering emotional and cultural connections across generations. The government also runs a Scholarship Programme for Diaspora Children, offering up to $4,000 annually to NRI and PIO students for undergraduate study in India.

These cultural initiatives reflect a deliberate effort to construct what researchers call “flexible citizenship” – a sense of belonging to India that does not require physical residence or formal nationality. By offering OCI status, cultural programming, and institutional inclusion through events like the PBD, the state works to keep the diaspora emotionally invested in India’s future.

A differentiated relationship: not all diaspora are equal 🔗

One important and often underexamined aspect of India’s diaspora policy is that it is not uniform. India has extended substantive rights and symbolic inclusion to Indian citizens and descendants of former citizens residing in the Global North, while establishing a social protection framework for low-wage emigrants in Gulf countries – though these migrants are often unable to access other substantive citizenship rights and are largely ignored at the symbolic level.

The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas events, for instance, are structured primarily around skilled professionals and business figures. The differential approach towards NRIs and PIOs has been a major reason for lack of connectivity with second and third generation migrants, and critics argue that the government’s engagement remains overly focused on elite diaspora communities in the West at the expense of the far larger population of blue-collar workers in the Gulf. For low-wage workers in countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the government offers schemes like the Pravasi Bharatiya Bima Yojana (PBBY), a compulsory insurance scheme for emigrant workers in ECR (Emigration Check Required) countries, and the e-Migrate system to monitor exploitation – but their integration into the broader national narrative of diaspora pride remains limited.

From brain drain to brain gain 🔗

With the opening of India’s economy in the early 1990s, the so-called brain drain started yielding unexpected positive results in terms of brain-gain, investments, remittances, philanthropy, and transfer of technology and skill. The Indian diaspora in Silicon Valley, for example, not only contributed to the growth of India’s IT industry through investment and knowledge transfer but also served as role models that helped legitimize the sector domestically. Prime Minister Modi, speaking at a Pravasi Bharatiya Divas event, declared that India is “converting the brain drain to brain gain” – a slogan that neatly captures the rhetorical and policy direction of the current era. The focus now is not just on keeping talented Indians at home, but on creating conditions – through investment opportunities, research funding, and institutional reform – that make returning or contributing from abroad attractive.

What do you think? Has India’s shift from viewing emigration as a loss to treating the diaspora as a national resource been equally beneficial for all segments of its overseas population – or does the policy disproportionately serve elite communities while overlooking the millions of low-wage workers abroad? And as diaspora engagement becomes a core part of India’s foreign policy, where should the line be drawn between leveraging overseas communities as diplomatic assets and respecting their autonomy as citizens of other nations?

References

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