Is there going to be light at the tunnel for NRIs in India?

NRIs stands for Non-Resident Indians. For the purposes of this article, it includes an Indian-born citizen, specifically of the US; green-card holders; work-visa holders; and student-visa holders.

About 250,000 students leave India to study in the US every year, the most from any country. Most of them stay back to work in the US while a tiny fraction returns home. There they find hostility and standoffishness.

Many homegrown Indians were not able to go to the States. They feel that those who did left for greener pastures when India was not doing well. In their mind, India is booming right now (which is not exactly the case) and returning Indians are like mercenaries trying to take advantage of the boom.

I returned to India two years ago to look after my mother, who is 92. She hardly ever drove, so people happily parked their vehicles outside our gate. I realized were I needed to take my mother in an emergency to the hospital in our car, I needed the space in front of our gate open.

A car used to be regularly parked in front of our gate. I called the owner and told him to move it. He did, but very angrily. He said that he would cut off my head and bury my body where no one could find it. He knew I was an American citizen. He told me not to hide behind my US passport, meaning not to report matters to the US embassy.

India does not apply, despite repeated requests from NRIs, dual citizenship. Therefore, when I became a US citizen, I renounced my Indian citizenship. Although I feel Indian, more so because in the US I am always considered Indian, my allegiance has been transferred to the US.

Just recently, a cousin asked me whether I was a US citizen. I said yes. He said wow, he US passport is so strong, you will not have any trouble in other countries. I said forget about other countries, I have trouble enough in India. He was incredulous. He said, really, you face trouble in India. I replied that he would have to be in my shoes to know.

A New York Times article dated November 27, 2009 and entitled Some Indians Find It Tough To Go Home Again cited the case of Shiva Ayyadurai, an entrepreneur and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a fistful of American degrees, who was motivated by then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s call to NRIs, to return home to contribute.

Shiva Ayyadurai joined the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. But soon he was at loggerheads with the opaque bureaucracy at CSIR and eventually moved back to Boston.

I have my own personal stories to relate. In 2005, I met Pat McGovern, CEO of IDC, who was interested in setting up a venture capital fund in India. Over the next two years, I researched the Indian market and even went to India to meet people to form a team.

McGovern offered me the role of general partner in the fund and asked me to introduce him to the people I had met. I did so. One of them cut me out of the deal and took over the fund. McGovern is dead now and dead men tell no tales.

In the past, American multinationals would send expats from the US to head up their India operations. But such is not the case anymore. Most of the IIT talent flees to the US but the IIM talent finds it hard to do so. It is this homegrown talent that MNCs now tap to lead their India offices. So really, there is no place for Indian expats.

It’s not only at the top, it’s also in the middle. Middle-tier executives in India are afraid that American returnees will outshine them, and eventually supplant them. So they place roadblocks in the path of the expats.

This article does not even deal with the driving in India, the air and noise pollution, and the lack of civic sense, all of which can be circumvented as I have done. NRIs deserve special work zones where they can exhibit their toils abroad and the special skills that they have garnered.

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