No poor NRIs please: Why Pravasi Bharatiya Divas is no cause to celebrate

I’m a Pravasi Bharatiya currently in India on holiday, however, I avoided going anywhere near the just-concluded Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) in Gandhinagar, a government sponsored jamboree where NRIs from around the world were fed dollops of inducements to return home in a rather more secular replay of Ghar Wapsi.

While I empathise with the expats’ nostalgia for their motherland and their urge to connect with old roots, what I can’t stand is the cloying nationalism and show of manufactured patriotism that has come to characterise this annual gathering first mooted by Atal Behari Vajpayee’s NDA government in 2003 to market the eventually doomed “India Shining’’ hype.

Even more off-putting is the overpowering stench of money that hangs over it. What was ostensibly conceived as an Old Boys’ re-union of sorts where all Indians living abroad were supposed to be welcomed on equal terms has gradually ended up as a club of mostly American and European rich NRIs.

The entry to this exclusive circle, dominated by BJP supporters, is determined not so much by a person’s affection for their ancestral land but by the depth of their pockets. The message is: Come home by all means but don’t forget to bring your dollars and pounds sterling; or you may not fit in.

When I was coming to India, I thought of attending it just out of curiosity. So, I looked up the PBD official website, run by the Government of India’s Department of Youth Affairs, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs and the Government of Gujarat, for assistance with registration and hotel booking. I found it striking that  three of the most expensive hotels of Gandhinagar were listed for delegates. Even the “special rates’’ that the sponsors said they had negotiated with these hotels for “your convenience” were simply too high for those not on company expenses. And then there were registration costs, and a host of other charges–all of which together cost a bomb.

What was it? An exclusive gala ball where Cinderellas without the proverbial glass slippers were not permitted? It sounded nothing like what it said on the tin which described it as “a forum for discussing key issues concerning the Indian diaspora’’.

Whisper, whisper not everyone in the Indian Diaspora is rich. Most are the middling sort who can’t afford five-star hotels or are in a position to make big investments but they care as much about their parental homeland as any Mr Big Money. But it seems that the Bharat Sarkar recognises only one sort of PBs. The rich and the influential sort.

It is instructive that of the 15 NRIs honoured with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Awards for their “exemplary’’ work, just one can be described as truly ordinary—Ashraf Parakunmummal, a UAE resident who helps families of Indian expatriates who die there send their bodies to India. The rest of the list reads like an NRIs’ Who’s Who.

PBD’s increasing commercialisation and a sense that it has been hijacked by Big Boys has started to bother even its long-time supporters. Lord Bhikhu Parekh, an early PBD enthusiast and a regular visitor, says he is “concerned’’ that the event has become so expensive. Indeed, he believes that Mahatma Gandhi, whose “Ghar Wapsi’’ from South Africa it celebrates, would have been deeply concerned.

“Imagining” what Gandhi would have said, Lord Parekeh wrote in The Indian Express: “I am a little concerned that attendance at the PBD costs quite a bit of money in travel, registration and accommodation. This puts it beyond the reach of most NRIs and makes it a largely middle class and Euro-American affair. I see this in the composition of today’s audience, which clearly does not represent all classes and groups. Perhaps the government of India could subsidise the event, as in the case of haj, or assist with the travel and accommodation.’’

There is also concern that the PBD has become simply a potential investors’ forum ignoring the role NRIs can play in other fields and which would allow a much more diverse cast of “foreign” Indians to contribute to India’s development.

As Lord Parekh “imagines”, Gandhi would have said that they could do “much more, especially in the fields of higher education, research and professional management, where India lags behind and is largely imitative’’.

The idea of a pravasi divas would make more sense if it could help in bringing skilled NRIs –doctors, academics, engineers—back to India. Or in highlighting and addressing the difficulties of workers of Indian origin in the Gulf and Africa.

“The government ought to think of luring back professionals who could enhance and add value to sectors that need their expertise. One, of course, would be in scientific research where India is woefully short of trained manpower. Another would be in teaching faculty for higher education. Such people will not come easily unless conditions at home are made conducive for them,’’ wrote Lalita Panicker in the Hindustan Times .

There is no indication that a change of gear is likely. If anything, with every passing year, it is becoming more and more about investment. This year, in particular, it was all about: come and give us your money. Cabinet ministers and chief ministers lined up, cap in hand, to seek investment in Narendra Modi’s “new’’ India. Chief ministers competed with each other to offer the “best deal’’ and a bigger bang for NRI bucks.

Sushma Swaraj, drawing on her boss’s penchant for alliterative slogans, came up with a three Cs formula exhorting them to “Come, Connect and Create” before bombarding them with a catalogue of Modi’s “out-of-the-box initiatives” and his government’s many achievements. India, she said, was showing “new dynamism” under the Modi government.

Though we have been in office for less than eight months, we have been able to effect a complete transformation", she told starry-eyed delegates claiming how Modi’s “out of the box initiatives and whirlwind tours have raised India’s global profile”.

Then there was the Prime Minister himself full of the special enthusiasm that he reserves for a certain kind of pravasi bharatiya. He smothered them with praise and a special package of goodies (one of them slipped through an ordinance) as he appealed to them to help him “transform” the nation. Hailing them as “great capital’’ for the country, he assured them that “many possibilities’’ were awaiting them in the “rapidly changing’’ India under his watch.

But only if they have enough money in the bag. Those on a budget need not apply.