Does India tend towards economic exploitation of its expatriates called NRIs?
Randhir Shorabji
May 28, 2005

It is an agony among many expatriate Indians today. They are called in India and abroad as nonresident Indians – NRIs. It is especially true among Indian Americans.

The common feeling among expatriate Indians is that they are looked upon by native Indians, the Indian Government and even some of the close relatives living in India as cash cows ready to be milked. “You have easy money in America” - says a father to his hard working son in America struggling to work day and night for an American employer for his green card.

The relatives, the communities and even the Government regard NRIs as bunch of people who earns easy money and is ready with expendable cash for whatever the need may be.

These days India is getting rich and India has a lot of Foreign Exchange coming in through Foreign Direct Investments. The Government is slowly removing incentives for the expatriates to save in India. Still most of the Government incentives are focused towards grabbing the money of these naïve Indians.

Experts say India is richer but real poverty is in the mind of people. It is common for a brother in India earning Rs. 60,000 or $1500 a month with no mortgage, no car payments, no insurance, all expendable income to ask for a plane ticket to USA from a brother living in America and silently struggling to make both ends meet.

You cannot blame the native Indians. The British left India in 1947 in such a horrible state squeezing everything out of India, the mentality of people in India is look towards the western nations for money. A prominent film personality Raj Kapoor said onetime – the British not only stole it all from India they kept the people of India naked and hungry for more than two hundred years. That effect is still manifested through the behavior of native Indians towards the expatriate Indians.

The biggest tragedy comes when close relatives betray for the lure of money or properties in India. In India NRIs are treated as someone who has a lot money to donate. People in India have little clue what life can be in the West. They get swayed away with luxury and higher standard of living in the Western world, but they never think how much it took to earn that.

An Indian American’s life is complex. There are lots of depression and tension in personal lives. But what really hurts is when we hear that close relatives spread false derogatory rumors in India because they did not get the money they wanted from the “expatriate Indian earning easy money in America”.

In many circumstances it is heard that a brother threatens to take away inherited properties in India unless they are taken care of.

Another big contemporary scam is to get married to an Indian American person and then influence or outright squeeze money from that person into the bank account of relatives in India. It is common in India to get a girl married in America to make sure that the rest of the family can slowly land into the American dreams.

There are exceptions. Not all in India are bad. But experiences of expatriates are getting worse everyday. Again if you really want to blame, you have to blame the British. They converted India – one of the richest countries in the world to poorest not only physically but also mentally. And the expatriates keep paying the price.

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