Jawad Iqbal
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Just as telling is another statistic: India now has the largest diaspora population in the world. More than 18 million Indians were recorded as living outside their homeland in 2020, according to a United Nations report. The United States has been the historically preferred destination, but Indians are increasingly turning their sights on other destinations, including Canada, the Middle East as well as Europe, in particular France, Germany and Britain.
This prompts a bigger question. Why are so many Indians apparently keen to leave their own country, one that is routinely hailed as one of the world’s fastest growing economies? Surely there’s a better economic future in staying put? Not so, apparently. This points to a paradox at the heart of modern India and its ambitions to be seen as a global superpower. It may have pretensions of becoming an economic powerhouse, but it also remains one of the world’s most unequal countries. It is a society that is riddled with divisions and social tensions based on caste, religion and region. Nor is it a stranger to corruption and cronyism.
As some Indians get richer, many continue to struggle: access to healthcare is seen as an unaffordable luxury rather than a basic right. India spends barely two per cent of its GDP on health. Its cities, stricken by decades of underinvestment in infrastructure, are groaning under the weight of population movement from the countryside: it is estimated that another 270 million Indians will end up living in urban areas by 2040.
The country is producing far too few good jobs, with large numbers of Indians in work without regular pay or social benefits. Thousands upon thousands of graduates find it difficult to find opportunities that match their qualifications.
Female participation in the workforce is an even bigger struggle, in part due to social pressures on women to leave work after marriage. Simply put, India’s rulers are failing to deliver. The growing number of Indian migrants crossing the Channel is stark evidence of this brutal economic reality: more and more Indians prefer a life elsewhere and are resorting to more and more desperate means to achieve it.
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