Of late, since the Report of the High-Level Committee on Indian Diaspora (ICWA 2001), the Indian government has been reaching out to the highly skilled Indian diasporas — comprising both non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin .

In its bid to break from the past indifference of the Nehru-Indira era, the government has begun to see them as ‘angels' and not as ‘traitors'. This relates to the negatives of their exodus or brain drain (the “porous” effects) being more than neutralised by the positive returns or “brain gain” (the “prowess” due to them) in the 21st century.

In a futuristic context, India, as a member of a club called the “Rising Southern Economies” (RSEs) a la India Migration Report 2010-2011, is projected to steer the 21st century into an “Asian Century”.

Turning points

As current trends show, it has been speculated that until 2020, global migration flows will be driven by the global demand for human capital; a demand for 54 million workers in the developed countries was met largely by the estimated surplus supply of 47 million workers in India, according to the US Census Bureau, BCG 2002-2003.

Expectations are high on the Indian diaspora remitting increasing volumes of money and/or returning home with enhanced skills and huge investible savings that would help India's stride towards becoming a “superpower”.

However, there are at least two unseen caveats that make this linearity less predictable in the future.

First, what is often neglected is the fact that the remittance potential of the future Indian migrants abroad is pre-empted by a more recent trend of the “silent backwash of remittances” to developed countries in the form of overseas Indian students' study funds. The latest Associated Chamber of Commerce (Assocham) of India figures put these outflows at $7.5- $10 billion per annum, averaging one-sixth of the global remittances into India.

Second, when the IT bubble had burst in the wake of the earlier American recession, the emergence of business process outsourcing triggered a wave of return migration of Indians.

The majority of the returnees were not among the best — the degree holder IT professionals, but rather the second rung diploma holders, and not all of them were coming back voluntarily but because of the non-renewal of their job contracts in a recession-hit US economy.

Conflict of interest

The return of the diaspora has its own implications. With some of the migrants returning home, the individual human faces that comprise the diaspora keep changing and hence the element of racial conflict in the destination society could be expected to remain low.

An explicitly stated policy of return migration (or “circular migration” as is being promoted now), involving only temporary stay rights for foreigners, allays the fears in the minds of many native citizens, of being economically competed out by them.

On the other hand, the social implications of temporary migration inherent in a policy propagating return or circular migration, on the migrants and their family members in the origin countries could become welfare-reducing or “porous”.

For example, a natural corollary of any individual migrant's decision to return home, when inherent in the decision of emigration itself, would be the question relating to the spouse and the children. Should one resign when leave of absence from job would not be commensurate with the emigrating spouse's engagement abroad?

Should one withdraw children from school when admission/readmission is going to be difficult in the country of origin? Overwhelmingly, the largest barrier to migrants accepting an international posting is family consideration (62 per cent), followed by language (13 per cent), difficulties in returning to country of origin (8 per cent), security (5 per cent), cost (5 per cent) and living standards (4 per cent).

Future Drivers

Apparently, neither the “porous effects” nor the “prowess” of the diaspora for the origin country would be the true drivers of emigration or return in India at the macro level. Instead, there are long-term strategic factors.

These generic strategies can be grouped into three easy-to-remember categories: Age, Wage, and Vintage.

Age deals with the neutralisation of the adverse effects of “age-structural change” that can be brought about through the younger returnees that re-migrate a second or third time, with the older returnees tending to stay on in the country of origin and adding to the stock of older workers.

The second, Wage, refers to the comparative cost advantage lost by the country of origin in global trade when the younger re-migrants take away with them to the destination countries the societal benefits of lower wages, perks and pensions, and the older returnees add to the cost of production and therefore to prices of goods and services they produce.

In addition, this also indirectly adds to the silent backwash flow of remittances out of India by lowering the wages, perks and pensions which determine the remittance-capability of the migrants.

The third strategic determinant, Vintage, implies the state-of-the-art know-how and skills embodied in the younger generations of student-migrants having access to the latest curricula.

This pre-empts the return of workers even before they complete their studies and become professionals – leading to a phenomenon that may be called “pre-migration” of the “semi-finished” human capital.

A New Perspective to Lead the World

Immigration policy changes and the arbitrariness of informal deviations in consular practices are two important but neglected domains of migration governance.

Unfortunately, this has been an area that the countries have considered as “non-negotiable sovereign territory” when it comes to opening it up for such multi-lateral negotiations.

Under the circumstances, a question arises regarding whether India having the potential to transition from being a developing source country of migrants to a potential superpower destination, would make a beginning in showing the developed countries how both immigration policies and practices could be made migrant-centric.

Having shed its indifference towards the diaspora and adopting an overtly positive attitude to them, India should now practise what it has been preaching in support of the liberalisation of immigration policies in a world going the other way in the name of security.

What are needed are migrant-centric policies, practices empathetic towards prospective immigrants who visit the Indian consulates abroad for acquiring Indian visas, and easy facilitation at the Indian immigration check posts when they first enter the country.

This could be the sign of a India going truly global, beyond the limited “prowess” of the Indian diaspora. Unfortunately, the latest trend of visa policy in India has seen it sailing with the crowd.

(The author is a Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)

This article is by special arrangement with the Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

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