Staff Writer – Archi
The global recession over the last few years has taken a toll on the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) who had settled down in various countries across the world. If the original scene of bright students leaving the country was once described as ‘brain drain’, this new trend of those people returning home is described as ‘reverse drain’.
As the unemployment rate showed a sharp rise across developed nations in the last three-four years, the highest estimated in the last 25 years, foreign professionals have become the frontal casualties in most countries.
With most countries in Europe and also in the American continent facing severe recession and economic gloom, financial and technology companies have come under political pressure to target foreign employees during layoffs. As their fate becomes increasingly uncertain, a growing number of Indians — both temporary workers and permanent residents —in America and Europe are packing up their bags and heading home to India.
And most of them are returning to a new India. “It is no longer the same India we left some 20 years back,” a recently-retuned NRI family said.
India is now one of the most stable economies in the world and had done pretty well to tide over this global economic crisis. India still remains one of the cheapest countries in the world.
Photo courtesy firstpost.com
At the same time a developing country like India welcomed all these NRIs with open arms as their expertise was needed in good measure to take the country to the next level.
With rising cost of production, foreign countries too started outsourcing most jobs to India which not only has a huge literate population, but at the same time their services are available quite cheap too. As such more and more jobs are also created in India.
It is always not easy to get adjusted to another socio-political system and most NRIs face this dilemma of whether they will able to feel at home again in India. But most found falling back on family members and friends circle in this hour of crisis provided them great mental stability. This security cushion also gave them a lot of confidence. “I feel we missed this support base abroad,” another NRI said.
However, the main problem faced by these NRIs is regarding their siblings. Most of these Gen X people were born and brought up abroad and did not associate much with their parental country. As such even though their parents did settle down in India, it was difficult for these youngsters to accept and adapt to this changed social structure and norms. Many parents were thus forced to leave their children back in the foreign countries since they were dead against returning to India.
It is thus a transitional stage for these numerous NRIs. They are back home but at the same time they have left behind a part of them in the country where they worked for years. It remains to be seen whether the West will meet East in future.
