Exodus
The jamboree that was the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas only shows up that swadeshi be damned, videsh is where middle India wants to be

SOUTIK BISWAS

The First Wave
Late 19th Century

Nature of migrants: Voluntary emigrants, traders, indentured labour

Destinations: Africa, Southeast Asia, West Indies
The Second Wave
1970s

Nature of migrants: Professionals and entrepreneurs
Destinations: US, Europe, West Asia
The Third Wave
The biggest one, happening now

Nature of migrants: White-collar professionals, students, diploma-holders.

Destinations: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, USA.

20,000,000
Indians Living Abroad

246,000
Indians who migrated to the US in the last two years

85,000
Skilled computer professionals leaving India every year contributing to annual 'resource loss' of $2 billion

11,000
Number of Indians who migrated to New Zealand in the last three years

5,000
Number of Indians who migrated to Canada in 2002

50
Percentage of IIT graduates leaving India every year

20
Percentage of medical school graduates leaving India every year

2
India’s rank among countries exporting people to the US. Mexico is number 1.

1
India’s rank among countries exporting students to the US. 90 per cent of them never return.



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Source: Ministry of External Affairs; Center for Immigration Studies, Washington, DC; Institute of International Education; International Migration Report 2002 of United Nations Population Fund; New Zealand Immigration Service; Department of Immigration and Multicultural And Indigenous Affairs, Australia
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Narender Chandok, 48, is a Delhi-based businessman who runs a pool parlour and a small construction firm. His wife, Raka, 47, owns a beauty salon. They live with their three school- and college-going children Tanya, Gaurav and Petal in a three-storey family home in posh Defence Colony. The seemingly comfortably settled Chandoks are not exactly the archetype of a family that wants to quit India for a better life abroad, right? Not quite. A year ago, a neighbour returned from a holiday in Canada and told them of the good life there. The Chandoks gave migrating to Canada a good, hard thought. How would it be to begin a new life in a foreign land in their middle age? Would they be able to cope with the cultural dislocation? Were they ready to slog it out in hardscrabble supermarket and supervisory jobs? Much soul-searching later, the family applied for migration to give their children a better life and beat the creeping recession in India that they feel is slowly crippling first-generation businesses like theirs. They even got Raka's brother, an accountant with a Delhi-based luxury hotel, to join the bandwagon. \"You have to be excellent in India to survive,\" says Raka. \"If you are not and your children aren't very bright, then you are sunk.\" Then there's the crime, pollution and the scramble for basic necessities. \"You read the papers and worry every day about your children returning home safely, about your future. The system sucks.\"

Far away, in lawless Patna, Man Mohan Jha, 52, a manager with steel ropes-manufacturer Usha Martin, is counting his days to July when he'll get on a flight to the US, where he's migrating to with his wife. \"I am fed up with India,\" says Jha. \"Everything works on power and connections. There's no scope for grHear out a desperate Nalin Gomes, 25, a Delhi-based online booking agency hand who's sold his family apartment to raise money for migrating to Canada: \"I work 16 hours a day and get Rs 10,000 at the end of the month. What does this money buy? In Canada, I want to be rich and successful in five years and run my own business.\" Well-settled Delhi-based marketing consultant Manmohan Sethi, 48, who's submitted his papers for migrating to Canada with his wife and two children, finds living in India \"chaotic and unsafe\". \"If my children's schoolbus is delayed by 30 minutes, I'm in a state of panic.


The Jhas, Patna Lawlessness is driving Man Mohan to the US. \"Or who goes to an alien land at this age?\"


When we go out, I don't know whether we'd return home safely. I'm ready to burn my bridges and leave.\" Laments Amit Raisinghani, 28, an accountant with a Mumbai firm who has applied for migration to New Zealand, \"I am just fed up with the low quality of life here. The pollution, overcrowding, the open corruption. How

long can you bear it?\"

If it's not the rage against a rotten system, it's the lure of the lifestyle that's been snaring people like Bangalore-based Joseph Prabhakar, 45, and his wife, Sagaya Mary, 30, who are packing their bags and migrating to New Zealand next month with their two children.Things had also begun to look a tad uncertain for Prabhakar, an engineering diploma-holder, after the electrical equipment company where he had been working for the past 25 years began slipping into the red.So he did what he thought was the smartest thing: he went on a tourist visa to New Zealand, got himself a job in a plastics company in Auckland, and has now returned for his family. \"The lifestyle is swell. I can own a house much faster there, instead of a plot of land that I've bought in an area where there's no electricity.
Then, there's no corruption and everybody is equal before the law,\" says Prabhakar. Wife Sagaya Mary says she will miss her relatives, \"but we have to think of our future and our children\".

Make no mistake about it. These people are not loony mavericks leaving their country of birth in a fit and emigrating mid-career


Amit Mukherjee, Lucknow Going to the US for undergrad studies, the 18-year-old says \"little in India has improved in 10 years\".
with their families. They are among the legions of hopeless Indians who see a bleaker future than ever before in their homeland. They are families who did not find a place in last week's platitude-soaked celebrations of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, a flashy jamboree 'honouring' the Indian diaspora in Delhi. The rising economic uncertainty with the collapse of the old (and now, new) economy firms, the absence of a social security net, relentlessly rising crime and terrorism, the lack of clean air, water, enough good schools, and a venal political culture where power, pelf and connections matter most are triggering a fresh wave of near-panicky exodus of Indians. It is also helping enormously that countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the three most sought-after countries, are inviting migrants through a passmark system. \"The greatest thing about migrating,\" says Abdul Majid, 36, a Vancouver-based architect who migrated to Canada with his family three years ago, \"is the feeling that I am finally a part of a civilised, law-abiding society and everybody is actually accountable\".
owth and security for people like us. It's the insecurity and lawlessness that's compelling me to leave. Otherwise, who goes to an alien land at this age?\"

To be sure, Indians have been migrating since the 19th century when they left in droves for Africa, Southeast Asia, Fiji and the Caribbean in response to demand for cheap labour after the abolition of slavery. Then came the second wave of migration in late 20th century when some of the country's best professionals and entrepreneurs left for the West and semi-skilled workers flocked to the Gulf and other parts of West Asia after the oil boom of the '70s. The third wave of migration now cuts across class, age and profession—from students to mid-career professionals to a 70-year-old man from Delhi who wants to migrate because he wants to \"show my talent that's been unrecognised in India\" to a businessman in Rourkela, Orissa, who says money can't buy you clean air to the chairman of a leading private power company who wants to migrate simply to take his children out of India.


Amit Raisinghani, Mumbai \"I’m fed up with the quality of life here,\" says the accountant. His solution: move to New Zealand.




The evidence is getting stronger by the day. Today, the Indian diaspora is 20 million—Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) who hold Indian passports and People of Indian Origin (pios) who are foreign citizens of Indian descent—in 110 countries and growing, according to the ministry of external affairs. India is among the world's

top 10 exporters of migrants, says a recent UN report. Indians are now second only to Mexicans in migrating to the US: some 2.46 lakh of them have migrated to the US in the last two years alone, according to the Washington, DC-based research group Center for Immigration Studies. Now chew on the frightful brain drain that quirkily describes as \"actually a good thing because the brains are being taken out of the drains in India\": 20 per cent of our medical school graduates leave the country, half of the iit graduates do the same and 85,000 skilled computer professionals leave the country every year, leading to a UN-estimated 'resource loss' of $2 billion to the nation.

Gone are the days when only the very best of our students went abroad on scholarships for post-graduate degrees and doctoral reasearch. India is already the largest source of foreign students in US universities and colleges, according to a report by the Washington, DC-based Institute of International Education.
Some 67,000 Indians enrolled with US tertiary-level schools in the past academic year, up by 22 per cent over the previous year and surpassing China, which was the leading source country for most of the '90s.In fact, the report said that the number of Indian students who had enrolled in US schools had doubled in the past seven years. \"Students who don't


The Sethis, Delhi Paterfamilias Manmohan hopes to take his family to Canada because India is \"chaotic and unsafe\".



gain admission to India's premier institutions see the US as an alternative that will open doors for them in the future,\" says Jane Schukoske, director of the US Educational Foundation in India.

The new Quit India movement is now playing at migration agencies, embassies, high commissions and international airports around the country. \"It's absolutely amazing how much people here are interested about our immigration policy,\" says Dominique Collinge, counsellor (immigration) at the Canadian High Commission. No wonder, over 27,000 Indians migrated to Canada last year alone, up from 16,300 in 1995. The high commission received 16,400 applications for migration in the skilled workers category—most of Indian white-collar migration happens under this—in 2001, up from 4,400 applications in 1999.

Some 2,000 immigration applications landed in the New Zealand High Commission in Delhi, \"leaving no standing space in the office\", according to a commission official, between April and mid-June last year, all pouring in in order to reach before the higher passmarks the country announced for migration kicked in. Indians were third in the list of top 10 nationalities who migrated to New Zealand in 2001-02. \"There has been a dramatic increase in the interest in Indian migration to New Zealand in the past two years,\" says Simon Smith, first secretary (immigration) at the high commission. In 2001, India came in at No.


Raja Velu and Padmini Raja, Hyderabad The 33-year-old couple are agreed: \"Unlike in India, people abroad are more professional.\"


9 of the top 10 birthplaces of Australia's residents with close to 1 lakh Indians living there, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Over 5,000 Indians chose to settle in Australia in just the last year alone. There's no let-up of interest even in the US, which has some of the toughest immigration laws. \"The demand is going up. Immigration

generates more immigration,\" says William M. Barlett, minister-counsellor for consular services at the US Embassy.

You find the evidence in the throngs at the immigration agencies that have sprung up all over, from Kochi to Calcutta. For a fat fee, the agencies help you with filling up immigration forms and once your application is cleared, even set you up in their accommodation in the new country for a month and sometimes even promise jobs. Posters even advise 'clients' (aspiring migrants) 'how to catch fish' (getting a job) on reaching Canada: you must buy a car \"within 10 days\" of reaching the country, be a \"go-getter, aggressive, live on sharing basis and learn cooking\" and \"even start the day early, do not waste time in meeting friends and relatives\". The 40-office agency now plans to expand into places like Patiala, Khanna, Amritsar and Ludhiana in Punjab.Two months ago, it began a 24-hour, toll-free emigration helpline that claims to do a near-instant assessment of a caller's chances of emigrating.
The agency also rents huge auditoria to conduct 'motivational seminars'—70 in Delhi alone in the last few years—where they show lifestyle country videos and hold Q&A sessions. In a basement in congested Kalkaji in Delhi, Suresh Dutt Sharma's Real Services Agency is plastered with inviting posters saying 'Reserve your seat for World-class Life',


Subhankar Mukherjee, Calcutta His take on going to Oz: \"If I’ve to live away from home, why not abroad?\"



'Sky is The Limit' and 'Think and Go Internationally' (sic) with a photograph of a sleeping man morphed over a subway train. Dutt Sharma, a small-time textile exporter from Panipat-turned migration agent who takes around Rs 2.5 lakh per client to move the migration papers and \"guarantees a job on arrival in six to nine months' time\", says 1,200 people signed up with his agency last year to migrate while another 10,000 contacted the agency for details. \"People are crazy about migrating these days,\" he says.

You see the craze in the queues at high commissions and embassies for immigration forms. On a freezing Delhi evening last week, it's a near-full house at the New Zealand High Commission's weekly hour-long advisory session for aspiring migrants. The questions fly thick and fast. An anxious young man says he's already quit his job, hoping for his application to be cleared fast. \"I would like to take my parents too, and my pet dog as well,\" says a young lady. \"Tell me the rules.\" A middle-aged man in a hurry to migrate is trying to find the fastest way out of the country. \"Can my father purchase a farmhouse in New Zealand? If he buys, can he become a permanent resident? How much money is needed?\" Then there's a gloomy middle-aged professional, who says, \"I have come from Hisar (in Haryana) to attend this. I have a lot of questions on migration as do a lot of the people in my area. Can you attend to these questions on the phone?\"
But the Promised Land is also turning out to be a Indian migrant's nightmare these days. The global economic downturn and the fact that the migrants' favoured countries don't fully recognise Indian degrees and job experience means that most of them have to spend their money, study afresh and be prepared for an unexpectedly long haul. Lured by its vast expanses, mild weather and high standards of living, Subhas Kumar, 25, an infotech worker from Hyderabad, migrated to Australia three months ago, confident that he would begin work with an IT company.On landing in Sydney he discovered that the job would not be available for another few months. Kumar is now saving money cooking at home and says when his visa expires in two years, he would like to go back home. \"Sydney is very expensive,\" he says. A 39-year-old journalist, who worked as a deputy editor of an Indian business magazine and prefers to remained unnamed, has not found a firm job after migrating to Australia 18 months ago. He put in three dozen applications with media houses around the country but only two translated into interviews. \"I've been doing a whole range of casual jobs as research assistant, standing in front of supermarkets, proof reading. But there's nothing concrete happening,\" says the journalist, who ekes out a student-like existence in Sydney on earnings of around Australian $800.

In New Zealand, where 60,000 Indians live today, up from 11,000 two decades ago, new migrants are finding it hard to land jobs of their choice. Auckland-based consultant Harjeet Golian warns that it usually takes his clients three to six months before they find a job, any job. \"I have seen immigrants getting really frustrated. And some aren't prepared to do hard jobs at all. They say, 'Why? I was better off there.'\" There are qualified Indians working as fruit pickers, gas station attendants, cleaners, taxi drivers and cutting vegies at McDonald's. Jahangir Ahmed, 29, from Mumbai and who holds a diploma in marketing, roamed the streets of Auckland for days looking for a job after arriving two months ago. After waiting in an Indian eatery which refused to pay him $800 in back wages, he's now working 20 hours a day at two jobs and earning between $1,500 and $2,000. \"You have to be ready for the extreme grind if you are not exceptionally qualified. I wish my agent had warned me about that before I left India,\" says Ahmed.

Joydeep Bhattacharyya, 38, a marketing manager who spent nine months in Toronto with his lawyer wife after migrating and tried setting up operations for a Calcutta-based software company, found a lot of the new Indian migrants in a funk. \"Countries like Canada need immigrants quite desperately for blue-collar jobs,\" says Bhattacharyya. \"But most of the Indians who land up are white-collar people and end up frustrated with the kind of jobs they get.\" He remembers meeting a middle-aged Indian who had left his job as the deputy general manager of a steel plant in Rourkela to migrate and now works as a $10-an-hour security guard. Also, a doctorate in metallurgy from Punjab working in a furniture shop. Bhattacharyya, who has returned to India, has a piece of sage advice for aspiring migrants: \"If you're below 30, not professionally qualified, willing to struggle hard, have no qualms about taking up any job that comes your way, only then you should think about migrating now.\"

Even the favoured countries seem to have realised the perils of rising 'unsuccessful' migrations. So much so that the New Zealand government has commissioned a survey on the status of migrants—5,000 migrants living in that country over the last three years will be asked on how they have fared and coped. New Zealand, Canada and Australia have already toughened controls, imposing higher passmarks and upping English proficiency scores and trying to link the number of migrants with the availability of the jobs in specific professions.So look before you leap.

But all this is not holding back the droves of desperate Indians trying to get out of Mother India. \"Idealism is dead and conditions for fostering idealism no longer exist. Middle-class people realise they have no future without connections, so they're looking for a safe haven,\" says sociologist Dipankar Gupta. \"It's all linked to declining meritocracy and bad governance,\" says Trilochan Shastry, a professor at iim, Ahmedabad. It's eventually the utter failure of the Indian state which forces people to escape its inefficiency and corruption. Ironically, our politicians and mandarins actually gave up on India a long time ago with many of their children studying or working abroad. \"We just don't have a Project India,\" says Gupta.

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Soutik Biswas with B.R. Srikanth in Bangalore, Manu Joseph in Mumbai, Amarnath Tewary in Patna, Ashis K. Biswas in Calcutta, Savitri Choudhary in Hyderabad, Sutapa Mukerjee in Lucknow, Oisika Chakravarti in New York, Janaki Bahadur Kremmer in Sydney and Sabita Majid in Vancouver

Good information.

Very long to read at once though!

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A Proud Indian Canadian

I felt the same way when I came to alberta in 2001, but things improved and I landed a 80K engineering design position here and doing well now in a senior proj engr position, It would have taken me about 15-20 yrs of ass kissing in india with all the south indians dominating the technology/engg positions eg all the ......chandrans, ......kars..etc who will not let anybody else rise up unless you are atelugu, tamilian or a keralite from the same town.... But I thought india was bad but here is even worse the south indians here in canada and some from the other parts are the most and relegious bunch of jokers. It is good that india has let all the junk come here and retain the best. i am plannning to return to india for good by 2008.

I am surprised , How come no immigrants from Canada participated in the outlook interview or in a such a long posting?

I believe the number of persons immigrating to Canada from India is much more than Australia and Newzeland or rest of the World.

I am trying to do a thesis on Canada Immigration. This peace of information is useful for my work.

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South Indians are not that bad as compared to North Indians in India as well in Canada.

I have very very bad experience with few North Indians while working in Delhi also in Canada.... I think he is a Hindu fanatic. I am Hindu too

The North Indians simply hate the South Indians for no reason..................

I lost my MNC job in India and a professional job in Canada while working with North Indians because of their dirty politics in the office.

They very fact, I started my professional career job (dream of every skilled immigrant) after twenty fifth day of my landing in Canada.

Because of his dirty politics, I lost my job in four months with an official layoff letter. But actually I was fired.


This is my experience with the North Indians.

ad1760 and Alberta Aspirants - You guys need to work in Thunder Bay area. You'll know what real racism looks like.

Politics are different. When people treat you like crap because you are not their skin color, it is altogether a different level of discrimination. What you guys faced is nothing compared to what I am facing here. I worked with lots of North Indians and South Indians. There were good people on both groups and crappy idiots in both groups.

But then I was an IT professional and may be thats the reason I haven't seen any discrimination based on my lanuguage or region in india. May be things are different in non-IT companies.

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India Canada Bhai-Bhai

indians here in canada are the most stupid and relegious bunch of jokers.



U SEEM TO BE AN ARROGANT PERSON...WAT DO U MEAN BESTS ARE RETAINED IN INDIA...HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN RESERVATION FOR SC/ST IN EDUCATION AND JOBS? EVEN AFTER GETTING 90% IN 12TH..STUDENT DONT GET EDUCATION IN A DECENT COLLEGE....WHENA 45% ST/ST MAN GETS IN...WHAT DO U SAY WHEN STUDENT CHOOSE SUCIDES RATHER THEN GOING THROUGH ALL THIS TORTUROUS EDUCATION SYSTEM?...I HAVE SEEN TONS OF STUDENTS EVERY YEAR LEAVING COUNTRY TO GET DECENT EDUCATION...U TALK ABOUT DISCRIMINATION...BUT HERE IN OUR COUNTRY A BOSS TALK TOU AS IF YOU ARE HIS PERSONAL SERVANT...LIKE BRITISH MASTERS..THEY STILL HAVE THIS HANGOVER....MANY OF MY RELAITVES ARE SETTLED IN USA,UK,CANADA...SINCE YEARS...ALL ARE DOING WELL...IF U FEEL TO RETURN THEN IT IS YOUR CHOICE....BUT AS A PUNJABI I HAVE A CONFIDENCE IN MY 2 HANDS.....AND I THINK ONE WHO WORKS ANYWHERE WITH HONESTY IS NEVER LOOKED DOWN....PEOPLE FROM SOUTH PREFER WHITE COLLAR JOBS....BUT NOT ALL...TOUGH IM A COMPUTER ENGINEER....BUT I STILL BELIEVE A PERSON WHO WORKS HARD ANYWHERE CAN MAKE HIS PLACE...AND MIND YOU .. NONE OF MY RELATIVES ARE BUNCH OF JOKERS..ALL ARE QUALIFIED OR HAVE SETTLED IN THEIR OWN BUSSINESS..

Hi Thunder Desi,

I understand the racism among white Canadians and other immigrants but that is a different issue and every one face here.

The South Indian and North Indian, basically they are Indians but they do not like each other.

India has the cast system and the lower cast people even cannot go to the temple or to the forward cast people house. He has to stay outside because their cast.

Then how do we expect other country people to avoid discrimination. I don't see any justice in the expectation.

I think few years back in Harayana, a number of SC/ST people were killed by Hindu Forward Cast people.

The reason stated to the public and Media by the Forward Cast Hindu people is that the SC/ST people killed their own few cows for their delicious Non -Vegetarian Food for a festive.

Cows are God per Hindu Forward Cast belief, so the Forward Cast people killed SC/ST people.

The SC/ST people are animal slaughters and the Forward Cast are Man Slaughters.........................see the difference of discrimination, cruelty of the Forward Cast People.

SC/ST people are also belong to Hindu but they do not believe cow as their God.
Cow is a animal and the SC/ST people are human but they are equated to the Animal Status in India. This is the forward cast achievement in the freedom India.

I agree one hundred percent with AD1760 statement about the bunch of Hindu Jokers in North America especially in Canada.................

Regarding the Reservation issue raised by Son of India for the education system in India.

I am asking a very fundamental question to the forward cast people; What they have achieved so far after scoring 99.99 to 100% marks in the + 12 subjects in the 59 years of freedom India. I did not see the proportionate development in India with 99.99 % or 100 % mark.

Forward Cast people just enjoying the benefits from the Government, and Private sectors.

India is not advancing to the developed country status BECAUSE OF THE FORWARD CAST PEOPLE AND HIGH POPULATION NOT BECAUSE OF SC/ST PEOPLE AND THEIR LESS MARKS 45% or 0 %

The developed countries like Canada and USA has a reservation system for the Native Indians (First Nations) to gain admission in the Universities after +2 (Grade 12). Why not in India.............

These countries are part of G8, where is the disadvantage due to the reservation system or the low marks.