Remittance

How does one categorise people who have migrated from one country to another in search of better economic opportunity? Does this move entail a serious thought process and does it also entail a violent rejection of one's heritage that one inherits by virtue of birth? These questions have been debated previously and there is no easy answer to them. What however is surprising is the wealth of data that is being generated now.

The Economist recently ran an article on the remittances being received by various countries. India topped the list of the countries in this category, In 2008, India received the highest remittance of $52 billion from its expatriate population. This tracking of remittances has been one of the unintended benefits of terrorist attacks like 9/11. Governments and world bodies have begun to track the amount of money transferred and have begun to tabulate this data. Hence, today we know about India receiving this huge inflow of funds, funds which are more than even the amount being invested by companies in India, characterised as FDI.

Individually, each of the first generation of migrants, those like me, most probably, will continue to send remittances from offshore accounts to the accounts in India. In the last six years, as I have found my footing in Canada, I have sent almost hundred thousand dollars back to my account in India. This is one small component of total amount received by India in the last few years.

But small components make big stories.

When I search for total population of Indian origin in Canada, it throws up a surprisingly small number of approximately 800,000 people, Similar figures are available for other countries like US, UK and other European countries. A rough back of the envelope calculation indicates that nearly 4,000,000 people of Indian origin are settled in the developed parts of western world.

A similar extrapolation of data can be made for Gulf countries as well. A conservative estimate of the numbers, my intention here is not to assiduously quote the exact number but to develop the big picture, of people of Indian Origin in Gulf countries and Africa would indicate that the total number of Indians spread out in those parts of the world would amount to a total figure of almost 5,000,000.

In nutshell, the total population of people of Indian origin living outside India would amount to nearly 15 to 20 million.

If these 20 odd million people have the potential to generate such huge inflows of capital for India, then imagine what would be the impact of another twenty to thirty million people working all over the world.

Recently, when huge deposit of oil was stuck off the coast of Brazil, its President Lula remarked; "God must be Brazilian". We know for sure, so far at least, that God, has not yet blessed India with such bounty. Thence, we cannot claim that God is Indian.

Yet, we have something that others dont have. We have a population base which is essentially very hard working and which has the potential to beat the world.

In another few decades, one in five persons in the world would be an Indian. Do we wish to confine ourselves to the geographical landmass even when we will outnumber other major population groups.


My humble suggestion to policy makers thus would be to start preparing our young men and women to venture out into the world. Our society must prepare young individuals to seek economic opportunities across the world. Only when this happens, will we be able to reverse the drain of wealth from our society.

Thus, along with instructions in english and maths, we must also provide instructions to our students on how to navigate different time zones, move across different geographical boundaries and arm them, at the time of their graduation with Passports. A readily available passport, to a student who has completed his Class XII, must be a included as a fundamental right of the population.

No delays must be accepted in implementing this policy and the agenda must rank high in the policy planning framework of all state capitals, For without that support, proper resource allocation for such a policy may not be realised.

The aim should be to quadruple the amount of remittance being received by India. Once we, as a society achieve that, we shall have far greater amount of wealth available to develop our infrastructure. We will have more schools, more housing, more hospitals and more money to develop more roads and railways to connect all parts of the country.

National integration will be made possible in real terms in real time.