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NRI as visitor and investor
Prem Kumar
I am an itinerant NRI from Canada at present visiting India. I went there some 35 years ago for higher studies and stayed on. The Indian government recently celebrated the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, exhorting NRIs to visit and invest in India. This is laudable. But as there is a diversity of NRIs, a question arises as to which kind of NRI is most likely to visit and invest in India?
Perhaps the Canadian NRI provides a likely answer. There are some 10 lakh Indians living in Canada. Most of them belong to what is popularly called ‘the working class’, which includes, among others, taxi drivers, clerks, petty shop keepers, factory workers, and so on. Most Indians living in the U.S. also fit into this broad category, except for a large Indian IT segment that has recently arrived there.
Experience shows it is not the working class NRIs in North America who often visit India. After all, they left home to earn money and that is what they are avidly doing.
They work hard to make a decent living: to save enough money to buy a house and the latest model car for the family, and to pay for their kids’ education. To do all this in North America is a big enough achievement in itself. Visiting India for them is thus a secondary concern.
Nor is the foreign-born Indian youth yearning to visit India. He or she is busy pursuing studies in a school. Besides, this type of youth is effectively cut off from Indian language and religion to have a deep longing to visit India.
Under the current visa rules Indian grandparents can easily visit their offspring in North America. This further obviates the scope of young Indians visiting India to merely see the grandparents.
Well-heeled pensioner
In fact the most frequent NRI visitor to India is the well-heeled pensioner. Lately hordes of NRI retirees are trooping to India, and for good reason: North American winters are bone chilling. In comparison, Indian winters are bearable to pleasant. So if you can avoid it, why suffer the torture of brutal North American cold weather.
India also provides excellent medical services and promptly. In contrast, one must wait several months for an eye operation in Canada, which is an obligatory routine in that country’s socialist healthcare system. Again, NRI retirees are thrilled to learn about their spiritual roots, thanks to Indian electronic media.
But nothing lures an NRI to India more than the current high exchange rate of dollar (Rs. 40 to $ 1). This instantly puts the visiting NRI in the high-income group and he can well afford domestic services for cleaning, washing, and cooking: a luxury item beyond the reach of most NRIs living abroad. Of course, being in India an NRI feels an ineluctable commonality of behaviour, food, dress, and language — a glue that eternally binds him to the motherland.
Some 200,000 NRI pensioners are poised to visit India on a regular basis. What they need is modern and safe Seniors Hostels and regional offices across India to have their dual citizenship application promptly processed. When I return home in April I will fervently exhort fellow Canadian retirees to visit and invest in India.
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