Why are rich Indians deserting India?
Donald Trump’s aide Laura Loomer may describe Indians as “Third World invaders”, but the world is rolling out the red carpet for them. Rich Indians, having emotionally seceded from their country for some time now, are moving bag, baggage and business out of India, joining an elite international set.
For rich Indians, home is no longer where the heart is. India, for them, is now no better than real estate, subject to high levels of taxation with no commensurate public services to benefit from. For these fast upwardly mobile personalities, India is turning into an urban volcano ready to erupt. Whether it is superstars from the world of glamour or sports, these New Rich Indians of no fixed address have chosen the West and the Middle East as their final destination.
Joining this global superset is cricketer Virat Kohli and his wife, actor Anushka Sharma, and their children. According to reliable sources, most top Bollywood actors have already bought property in England, Singapore and Dubai, and they visit India only for work and very little leisure. There is hardly a corporate leader from India who doesn’t own a home abroad. According to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2024, 4,300 millionaires will leave India by the end of this year. Last year, 5,100 of them moved their homes from India.
Ironically, as India is heading towards becoming the world’s third largest economy with a GDP of $5 trillion, the beneficiaries of India’s growth story have chosen to dump their motherland and become part of the Delhi-Mumbai-Singapore-Dubai-London-New York power corridor.
It has now become fashionable for the Indian glitterati and chatterati to boast about their expansive homes in the UAE, Thailand, Bali, London and south of France, and lament about the worsening living conditions in Indian cities. The priciest apartments in Mayfair, London, are now owned by Indians who run telecom companies, airlines and steel plants in India.
Since technology has converted the entire world in to a tiny global village, Indians are running their empires more comfortably and without fear, from Trump Tower in New York to the Technology and Financial Park in Singapore. In fact, second homes in various cities abroad are used by high net worth Indians to host periodic review meetings with senior executives who are flown out from India in chartered flights, never mind the carbon footprint.
What is more worrisome is the rising trend of Indians renouncing their citizenship. It means they have chosen to disconnect from their roots and opt for an entirely new social and cultural ecosystem. According to statistics shared by the external affairs minister in parliament last year, over 16 lakh Indians have surrendered their citizenship since 2011. Their number rose sharply from just 85,256 to 2,25,620 last year. The minister also disclosed that Indians have taken up citizenships in 135 countries, which indicates that most of them just want to leave India at any cost and settle in any other part of the world.
Affluent Indian families are easily charmed by investments for citizenships offered by Caribbean nations Antigua and Barbuda, and Spain as well as the ‘golden visa’ from Greece and the UAE. Numerous advisory firms have popped up in India whose only expertise is to help upwardly mobile young entrepreneurs in finding a suitable home abroad along with a highly profitable business with minimum problems. They have devised innovative methods to use liberal schemes under which each Indian can remit $2,50,000 annually to invest anywhere in the world. Surprisingly, these consultative agencies have been able to successfully thwart the Indian government’s attractive ecosystem for ‘ease of doing business’ in India.
The competitive craze to flee stems from various economic, social, governance and cultural issues. Despite growing at 6.5 percent annually, India hasn’t been able to provide a good quality of life. India has added over one lakh kilometres of national highways during the past decade. It has constructed over 100 new airports. There is a stupendous increase in the number of universities, medical colleges, research institutions, new startups and unicorns, but none of these has dented the desire to move out. Losing a few lakh Indians out of a nation of 1.40 billion people is not a big deal; yet, it is bad optics for India.
The primary reasons for many Indians leaving the country appear to be pathetic civic infrastructure, breakdown of law and order in many cities, suffocating pollution and a complex tax structure. For many professionals, working from office has become a nightmare. With a liberal auto policy meant to enhance supply, roads in 200 Indian cities are choked. India has perhaps the largest variety of vehicles dotting the roads—from cycles, e-rickshaws and three-wheelers to tractors, two wheelers and four wheelers. According to official estimates, India has 21 crore two-wheelers and 7 crore four-wheelers that clutter the roads, averaging one car per 10 adults. The average speed of a car in any big metropolis is just 5 km an hour. Overcrowding of Indian roads leads to major social and health related consequences. These vehicles spend more time on road emitting carbon fumes and also lead to many cases of road rage.
Many office-goers miss flights and meetings because of unpredictable traffic hazards. India has the largest number of the world’s most polluted cities.
If gridlocking of roads wasn’t enough, total collapse of civic infrastructure, excessive and tormenting bureaucracy and administration has led to the flight of the both human intellect and capital. In almost all the cities, unauthorised construction as well as encroachment of public spaces like parks, playfields and even footpaths have made lives unbearable for health- and safety-conscious citizens. Footpaths have been turned into food marts. Yet, never has any senior civil servant or police official been taken to task for the breakdown of the system.
Citizens have to suffer even noisy sermons and prayers from mosques and temples without any decibel limits and the police fail to implement even the directions of the courts. The most powerful idea floated by the prime minister soon after he took over has been sabotaged from within. Though it has changed the mindset of the people who now walk the extra mile to ensure cleanliness, municipal authorities are conspicuous by their absence on the ground.
Moreover, with rulers indulging in competitive cacophony to protect their vote banks, it is the ordinary, law-abiding resident who is bearing the brunt. As the fight for identity and entitlement dictates the contours of national politics, good governance has become collateral casualty. Coupled with a tardy legal system and multiple tax authorities, for these aspirational Indians, India is becoming an unliveable habitat. Iqbal’s song—“Saare jahan se achchha, Hindustan hamara”—has become a dream of the past. For the Indian establishment, it’s a big challenge to retain both the talent and the wealth for a viksit and surakshit Bharat.