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Why should the Indian taxpayer pay for the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas? When something becomes a ritual, it loses its meaning. So it is with the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, the second of which is upon us. The first was marked by sharp differences between West-Asian NRIs and their richer more powerful cousins in the West, particularly in America and Europe. The first group was denied duel citizenship because of security reasons while the other was welcomed with open arms. That war is going to spill over into the second Divas. V.S.Naipaul and his wife, Nadira, were all over the NRI meet last year. Indeed, Naipaul was the most celebrated PIO after making a career of running down the land of his forebears, but maybe his sidewinders against Islam qualify as literature and qualify for celebration in a post-9/11 world. On the other hand, India??™s ambassador-at-large in the United States, B.K.Agnihotri, put up a grand sulk in all the sideshows of the Divas, because he perceived cold-shouldering by the officialdom, if not the BJP and the Sangha, to whom he swears loyalty. Anyhow, if memory serves right, he was not on the dais with prime minister A.B.Vajpayee last year, and he should be a dissatisfied party tomorrow when the second Divas opens. For the rest of the NRIs and PIOs, it was a paid holiday by the Indian government. Indians being Indians, even those who had homes in Delhi checked into five-star hotels because the foreign office was picking up the tab. Some others fitted the Divas into a long holiday in India. On some Divas days, they could be seen in Janpath haggling in curious clothes and curiouser accents for mobile phones. Most could not believe the material prosperity abundantly displaced in Connaught Place. Except for some PIOs from Barbados and other off-the-map places who came with a genuine desire to be part of the pan-Indian community, a lot of the others, especially from the US, wangled a trip because they were somewhere or the other connected with the Indian embassy or with pro-BJP, pro-RSS organisations. A couple of them who had retained all the mentality of Regharpura racketeer told this writer that the first thing to do on getting dual citizenship was to contest the elections. Not the Lok-Sabha elections, silly, but to buy up a place in the Rajya Sabha. ???You know, he has the resources,??? said an Indo-American journalist on the junket. He was as thrilled about it as if he was getting that Rajya-Sabha seat. The point is, what do these NRI/PIO jamborees achieve? The Indian government cannot boast of any excess flow of FDI on account of the Divas. If you have noticed, NRIs keep the tightest purse around. Not like the overseas Chinese at all, who despite the ferocious dictatorship pour billions of dollars into China. Their investments in 2001 were $300 billion and rising. On the other hand, the NRI portions of India??™s $100-billion foreign-exchange reserves are the most fragile, and the moment India??™s interest returns became unremunerative, they will flee. You cannot be emotional about money matters, of course, but by the same token, the government cannot bend over backwards to please overseas Indians. There are obviously two types of NRIs. There are the Kanwal Rekhi sort who invest millions in their IIT alma maters and dream of progress in Bihar. Such sort, if you notice, are inevitably technocrats, who are fiercely attached to the institutions which got them pride of place in the West, and so they reflexively come back to them again and again. But instead of encouraging their institutional investments, the government puts roadblocks like the Bharat Shiksha Kosh. Rekhi has gone on record to say he will not put money in a fund run by ???feckless??? bureaucrats. On the other hand, the government spends crores on NRI divases feting NRIs and PIOs who grab more than they ever give. Does it make sense? India is not Israel that it needs the diaspora in the United States to keep Washington in a state of permanent friendship. Ironically, in the first months of the Bush administration, the Jewish lobby came to India??™s support in the White House, the Congress, and other centres of power, because of Israel??™s own interest in developing close ties with India. By himself, Vajpayee may not have been so keen to host Israel??™s controversial premier, Ariel Sharon. When individual Indians are not in the race for political power and glory in America, they band themselves into groups which proclaim friendship with whichever political party happens to be in power in India. During the Congress reign, it was Kamal Dandona, and now, it is ???Friends of the BJP???. As for India, there is no deal in all this. On his recent visit to the United States, or perhaps on an earlier trip, Vajpayee slammed the various Indian groups for squabbling amongst themselves. The simple truth is that the NRIs and PIOs need India more than India needs them. On its own strength, India has become a middle power, and India??™s staggering economic progress is being powered by resident Indian entrepreneurs and IT wizards. This is not to suggest shutting the door to NRIs and PIOs, but to bring a measure of balance in their relationship to their self-professed mother country. Having said their piece, they must now share of the goodies they have been fortunate to accumulate. There is no romance left in the PIO stories anymore, and patience is wearing thin with NRIs. It is hardly fair that you and I should pay for rich and selfish NRIs to have a good time in India, and be abused in the end. http://www.northeasttribune.com/editorial.htm |
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March22, 2004 - [India Thinkers Net] Indian NGO's enter mainstream politics >> |
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