The Indian diaspora strategy : skilling, emigration and collecting remittances

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Graduate School of Social Sciences Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)

The Indian Diaspora Strategy

Skilling, Emigration and Collecting Remittances

Master thesis Political Science, Political Theory and Political Behaviour (PTPG) June 2016

by Roel Marius Eli van Hulten, 11010517

Supervisor: Dr. Darshan Vigneswaran Second marker: Dr. Beste Isleyen

Number of words: 19.697

Abstract

This qualitative study investigated the influence of a neoliberal governmentality in Indian diaspora policies on the potential mobility, motility, of Indian residents through a mixed research method of a literature review, a content analysis and a discourse analysis. Home state governments were expected to engage in motility enhancing policies when adopting a neoliberal governmentality in their diaspora policies. Contrary to other studies to neoliberal governmentalities in diaspora policies, this thesis found that the Indian government does not formulate its diaspora along socio-economic lines. Furthermore, it was found that through the establishment of a skill development policy framework, a neoliberal governmentality in Indian diaspora policies indeed caused the Indian government to adopt motility enhancing policies.

Keywords: Diaspora strategy, Indian state-diaspora relationship, neoliberal governmentality,

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Introduction

During the 2015 Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), an annual event that is organised by the Government of India (GoI) on January 9th to commemorate the day Mahatma Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and hence to celebrate the achievements of the Indian overseas community, Minister of External Affairs Smt. Sushma Swaraj announced major transformations concerning the organisation of PBD. Instead of the conference style event that was introduced in 2003 and that saw the celebration of thirteen consecutive editions, accompanied by a Youth PBD in 2015 and Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (RPBD) events in cities such as Sydney (2013), London (2014) and Los Angeles (2015), the PBD as organised until 2015 was transformed into an biennial event. Every other year, the PBD will be organised in such a way to give room to overseas Indians and specialists from India to have ‘day-long deliberations’ across ten different issues concerning the Indian diaspora. After their ‘day-long deliberations’ they will then put up recommendations which are sent to the Minister of State and the Minister of External Affairs, enabling them, if necessary, ‘to take immediate action’ in the form of new policies concerning India’s engagement with its diaspora (Business Standard, 2016, January 4; Ministry of External Affairs, 2016, January 9). This professionalization of the PBD underlines the effort which the GoI has been putting in the state-diaspora relationship since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Remittances have exploded since the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1980s and the GoI’s turn to investments by overseas communities since the economic crisis that hit India in the beginning of the 1990s. Increasingly, the professionalization of government efforts are, besides from remittances of financial capital, aimed at remittances of human resources in order to face the challenges of a process framed as a ‘brain drain’ to countries in North-America and Western Europe (Khadria, 2004).

The proliferation of the Indian state-diaspora relationship is not an individual case, but one of many. Where less than ten governments actively engaged with their diasporas in the 1970s, this number has exploded throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s with now more than a hundred-and-forty governments having developed diaspora institutions and policies in the neoliberal era (Gamlen, 2014), differing from extra consular services to entire ministries such as India’s MOIA devoted to their populations abroad. Moreover, this proliferation is not only taking place in the global South, where much can be gained from populations abroad in terms of development, but also in developed countries. Even New Zealand, the UK and Germany have increasingly engaged with their diasporas. Ostensibly, this proliferation serves the same goals as earlier mentioned in the Indian case: bringing in and streamlining more financial and

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human capital remittances. However, authors have increasingly argued that a complex process is lurking behind the ‘tapping’ policies. Larner (2007), Gamlen (2014) and Ragazzi (2009) have argued that a shift is taking place from what Délano and Gamlen (2014) call ‘territorial’ to ‘popular sovereignty’ as, in the neoliberal era, governments try to generate financial and human resources from overseas communities through the governmental rationality of neo-liberal governmentality.

At the same time as the proliferation of state-diaspora relationships and diaspora policies, a so-called mobilities’ turn has taken place in social sciences and humanities. This turn holds that mobility should be seen as an important form of capital and therefore can be distributed unequally amongst people:

There seems to be little doubt that mobility is one of the major resources of the 21st-century-life and that it is the differential distribution of this resource that produces some of the starkest differences today (Cresswell, 2010).

Furthermore, Cresswell (2010) argues that mobility is more than the act of moving alone. Rather, it is an entanglement of physical movement, representations and practices of movement with traceable histories and geographies, which therefore makes it a political conduct. Moreover, as Cresswell (2010) argues, when examining the politics of mobility, one has to keep six questions in mind: why does a person or a thing move? How fast is it moving? In what rhythm? What route does it take? How does it feel? When and how does it stop?

Contrary to Cresswell’s notion of mobility as the abovementioned constellations of actual movement, Kaufmann, Bergmann and Joye (2004) developed the concept of ‘motility’, which consists of one’s ability to be mobile both spatially as socially. Kaufmann et al. (2004) consider mobility to be capital, interchangeable with other forms of capital like financial, human or social capital. In order to conceive of mobility as capital, they presuppose a link between spatial mobility and social mobility with motility linking the former to the latter. Motility in this sense is defined ‘as the capacity of entities to be mobile in social and geographical space or as the way in which entities access and appropriate the capacity for socio-spatial mobility according to their circumstances’ (Kaufmann et al., 2004, pp. 749-50). Thus, contrary to Creswell’s (2010) concept of mobility, this concept of motility does not focus on the act of moving, but draws potential mobility into the scope of mobility studies. The concept of Kaufmann et al.’s motility consists of three interdependent elements: access, competence and appropriation (Ibid, p. 750). Access in this sense refers to ‘the range of

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possible mobilities according to place, time and other contextual constraints’, competence to ‘skills and abilities that may directly or indirectly relate to access and appropriation’; i.e. physical ability, acquired skills and organizational skills. Appropriation, the last interdependent component of motility, refers to ‘how agents interpret and act upon perceived or real access and skills’. Regarding this potentiality to be mobile, Salter (2013) points out that at least as important as analysing those entities moving are those entities which are standing still, being stopped before starting to move. E.g. those who do not own the right documents are unable to move. Moreover, mobility as capital consists of ever-growing value since the twenty-first century is an era of fluidity and openness (Urry, 2007). Technological and cultural changes alter the way we look at borders, making it normal to think beyond them and to cross them frequently. However, a lack of economic resources and political rights denies most people to participate in this borderless world (Castles, 2010), encouraging the unequal distribution of motility and hence financial and human capital.

Thus, the mobilities’ turn has witnessed the introduction of potential mobility (motility, referring to both social as spatial mobility) as capital, interchangeable for and interdependent with other forms of capital, while it saw the introduction of actual mobility as an entanglement of physical movement, representations and practices of movement dependent upon traceable histories and geographies, causing the conditions of movement to vary from entity to entity. When conceiving of something as capital, naturally one’s access to and the supply of the capital varies over time. Social and economic changes are therefore capable of changing mobility on a societal scale.

Interestingly, the strands of literature on the mobilities’ turn and diaspora policies proliferated at approximately the same time and even more so, diasporas are born out of past mobility. However, the two strands have never been combined to trace the influence of ‘diaspora strategies’ on potential mobility, or more specifically on emigration policies. This thesis will focus on the Indian case and sets out to find out how new conceptions of diasporas and neoliberalisation in India have caused the Indian government to alter the relationship between India as a ‘home country’ and communities of expatriates and descendants of migrants and how the Indian government itself endeavours to construct the Indian diaspora by enhancing people’s motility. Therefore, the research question of this thesis will be as follows:

How did the adoption of a neoliberal governmentality in diaspora policies by the Indian government cause the Indian government to enhance motility of its residents?

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By conducting a literature review to the Indian state-diaspora relationship, I will demonstrate how the governing rationalities behind the relationship between the Indian government and its overseas communities have changed over time. Furthermore, by conducting a content analysis to policy documents such as an Emigration Act, Memoranda of Understanding, skill development schemes and documents by advisory boards, I will set out to demonstrate how these changing governing rationalities were institutionalized into new policy frameworks. The same policy documents will be analysed in order to trace India’s efforts to enhance its residents’ motility. Lastly, by conducting a discourse analysis to speeches by high Indian officials, I will endeavour to trace whether the found rationalities resonate in the way the Indian government directly interacts with its overseas communities in order to understand how the Indian government tries to enhance the ways in which overseas communities engage with India’s development. All the above mentioned analyses are needed to understand how the Indian state-diaspora relationship has changed under a neoliberal governmentality that focused on the bringing in of human capital, which subsequently laid the foundation for the conviction that further emigration from India would do the development of India more good than harm.

The diaspora as a state category

This section of the thesis elaborates on the adoption of neoliberal governmentality in the literature on diasporas and diaspora policies. First of all, in order to understand the conceived role being played by neoliberal governmentality, this section traces the proliferation of academic literature on diasporas and demonstrates the particular notion of the term ‘diaspora’ being used in theories of neoliberal governmentality which has changed significantly from the term ‘diaspora’ being used at the beginning of this proliferation. Then, the key elements of neoliberal governmentality will be summarised, after which these key features will be matched to theories of neoliberal governmentality in diaspora policy literature. This part will be followed by arguments and undertakings of authors to place the line of argument of neoliberal governmentality within a wider narrative of neoliberalism concerning diaspora policies. This section will be ended by the formulation of a hypothesis and of several sub-questions specified to the analysis of the Indian case.

From categories of analysis to categories of practice

Spawned by Larner’s (2007) concept of ‘diaspora strategies’, looking at diaspora policies through the lens of neoliberal governmentality meant a ground-breaking paradigm shift in diaspora literature. The proliferation of diaspora literature, naturally running parallel

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with the proliferation of diaspora engaging policies, started off with the argument that diasporas are ‘that segment of a population living outside the homeland’ (Connor, 1986). Later, Tölölyan (1996), himself being a member of the Armenian diaspora in the USA, argued amongst others that paradigmatic cases of diasporas such as the Armenian and Jewish diaspora have always emphasised ‘doing’ instead the merely ‘being’ diasporic as in Connor’s (1986) notion. Subsequently, drawing from literature of transnationalism, ‘simultaneity of connection’ (Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004) - wherein assimilation and enduring transnational ties are ‘neither incompatible nor binary opposites’ - and hybridity (Hall, 1990), Brubaker argued that diasporas preserve ‘a distinctive identity vis-à-vis a host society’, but, contrary to Tölölyan’s (1996) notion of diasporas, that this preservation of identity does not mean that diaspora communities are clearly delineated communities with foreign identities in their host countries. Furthermore, Brubaker (2005) argued that we should not conceive of diasporas as actual entities or ‘categories of analysis’ such as in the writings of Connor (1986) and Tölölyan (1996), but rather as ‘categories of practice’ that ‘not so much describe the world as seek to remake it’. These categories of practice should be regarded, Brubaker argues, as political communities and we should speak of diasporic stances, projects, claims, ideas and practices. After adopting a similar notion of diasporas, Kleist (2008a; 2008b) argues that the analytical weaknesses of some of the usages of the term can be used by these categories of practice as a means of political mobilisation. To Ragazzi (2012), all definitions given to diasporas reflect political projects and these definitions could be divided into two different groupings, namely diasporas as a thing and diasporas as a process, where the first grouping reflects an essentialist approach ‘making it possible to construct the diaspora as a historical and political project’ and the second grouping reflects a processual approach ‘considering diasporas not only the end result but also the process through which a particular social and political reality is produced’. Thus, along the proliferation of literature on diasporas and subsequently on diaspora policies, an analytical shift has taken place from diasporas as an entity to diasporas a political project.

Neoliberal governmentality

It was the last step in the above described evolution of diaspora literature, the adoption of the notion of diasporas as political projects, that signified a shift from the emphasis on diasporas to an emphasis on diaspora policies, which subsequently triggered the drawing in of the Foucauldian concept of neoliberal governmentality into the scope of literature on diaspora policies. This notion of governmentality positions itself as the political rationality behind

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governing within the ideological framework of neoliberalism, that, according to Foucault, does not consider the economic domain to be one of many domains in society, but as the overarching domain (Lemke, 2001). Logically, the positioning of other domains such as the state and the social domain within the economic domain, highlights the importance of the market. According to neoliberalism, it is not the state that constitutes market freedom, ‘for the market is itself the organizing and regulative principle underlying the state’ (Ibid, p. 200). Furthermore, by drawing the social domain into the economic domain, neoliberalism’s central point of reference becomes the homo oeconomicus or the economic individual, the citizen doing cost-benefits calculations in the decision-making process (Gane, 2008; Lemke, 2001; 2002). In neoliberalism, this homo oeconomicus is matched to the by neoliberalism developed concept of human capital, i.e. the wage labourer holds human capital which consists of ‘an inborn physical-genetic predisposition and the entirety of skills that have been acquired as the results of investments’ (Lemke, 2001, p. 199), while being an economic individual fully responsible for its own investment decisions to produce ‘surplus value’, turning them into ‘entrepreneurs of themselves’ (Ibid). Thereby, neoliberalism, according to Lemke (2001, p. 200), ‘ties the rationality of the government to the rational action of individuals’:

However, its own point of reference is no longer some pre-given human nature, but an artificially created form of behaviour. Neo-liberalism no longer locates the rational principle for regulating and limiting the action of government in a natural freedom that we should all respect, but instead it posits an artificially arranged liberty: in the entrepreneurial and competitive behaviour of economic-rational individuals (…) [I]n the neo-liberal thought of the Chicago School he becomes a behaviouristically manipulable being and the correlative of a governmentality which systematically changes the variables of ‘the environment’ and can count on the rational choice of the individuals (Lemke, 2001, p. 200).

In other words, neoliberal governmentality refers to the by the government adopted techniques of controlling the behaviour of individuals, offering them the freedom to make decisions for themselves. However, it is the individual that bears the responsibility of its actions, since it has the freedom to make its own decisions. Moreover, Lemke (2001, pp. 201-2) argues that this strategy shifts the responsibility for social risks into ‘the domain for which

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the individual is responsible’ whereby it transforms into ‘a problem of self-care’, causing the individual to do rational-economic and moral cost-benefits calculations.

Neoliberal governmentality in diaspora policies

How does this notion of neoliberal governmentality relate to diaspora policies? By examining the adoption of ‘diaspora strategies’ by the New Zealand government, Larner (2007) argues that around the world, expatriate experts earlier were urged to return to the home country or were considered to be ‘forever lost’ if this urge was not met. Moreover, according to Larner (Ibid, p. 332; 335-6), after adopting the neoliberal notion of human capital, governments recently ‘discovered’ expatriate populations as useful resources of financial and human capital to face their experienced ‘brain-drains’ and then combined this ‘discovery’ with techniques of engaging these expatriates in activities in their home countries without requiring them to return. The neoliberal governmentality technique of ‘systematically changing the variables of the environment’ (Lemke, 2001, p. 200) was used by putting emphasis on ‘the global’. According to Larner (2007, p. 332-3), this emphasis on the global and globalisation is not reflecting a shift into a new reality we are living in, but rather ‘a specific representation of the world that is being created, maintained, aligned and made to count’. Furthermore, Larner (Ibid, p. 331) argues that the New Zealand government specifically set out to frame New Zealand as a ‘globally connected nation’. In other words, under neoliberalism, states started to show interest in human capital and adopted notions of globalisation, the ‘deterritorialized state’ and ‘popular’ instead of ‘territorial sovereignty’ (Délano and Gamlen, 2014) in order to justify governing expatriates with the aim of attracting human and financial capital from them. Explaining the proliferation of diaspora policies in terms of a neoliberal governmentality focused on human and financial capital has caused authors such as Larner (2007) to argue that the process of category formation by home state governments takes place along economic lines. In other cases, this division along socio-economic lines would imply a further division along racial lines (Mullings, 2011).

Ragazzi (2009) places the rationality of a neoliberal governmentality in diaspora policy within a wider perspective on rationalities behind state-diaspora relationships by tracing three distinct rationalities which were adopted in a chronological order, but which could be combined with one another. According to this periodization, state practices regarding diasporas first of all have shifted from disciplinary rationalities (where states emphasised the importance of return while dividing emigrants into friends and foes of the state and promoting an official national identity abroad) towards what Ragazzi calls ‘liberal governmentality’

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(where populations abroad are already seen as a resource in both financial and human capital). This second phase of emigration policies, which was built upon the idea of circulation, saw the dramatic rise of migration programs with guest workers who were ought to return to their respected home countries after expiration of their labour contracts. However, most guest worker programs failed due to what Ragazzi calls ‘Foucault’s dichotomy between the population and the populace’, i.e. that part of the population that ceased to circulate and chose a permanent residence in their host states. The third phase is what he calls the ‘neoliberal moment’. This phase is characterized as the phase wherein diaspora policies emerged: the transition of territorially bounded populations that fell into the scope of government policies towards populations irrespective of their territorial location; the dispersion itself being seen as a resource and legitimate modality of political existence. Ironically, the failure of the second phase has enlarged the well of people living abroad and the resources that could be drawn from it. Furthermore, similar to Larner (2007), Ragazzi (2009, pp. 389-90) shows how symbolism, the transformation of diasporas into state-categories and the growing requirement of populations living abroad to act as lobbyists and extensions of foreign policies have helped states to get a firm grip on their populations abroad.

Gamlen (2014) distinguishes literature on what he calls ‘tapping’ policies, which focuses on the material interest of origin states in the form of remittances, skills, connections etc., from literature on so-called ‘embracing’ policies, focusing on nationalist ideas, transnationalism and shaping identities abroad. Thereafter, he argues that both approaches to the emergence of diaspora policies inadequately address the importance of governmentality as the link between the two strands of literature and fall short in terms of structure and agency (Ibid). Furthermore, Gamlen (2014) argues that governmentality manifests itself in two different ways in diaspora policies, being transnational governmentality on the one hand and neoliberal governmentality on the other. Transnational governmentality in this sense refers to the by epistemic communities prompted framing of migration as a ‘win-win-win’ situation, bringing benefits to all actors involved in international migration. Accordingly, this transnational governmentality makes states think of themselves as members of an international community, responsible for their people beyond their own borders (Gamlen, 2014, pp. S192-S203). Neoliberal governmentality, according to Gamlen, is adopted by home state governments because states formally do not have any jurisdiction outside of their own territory and therefore have to rely upon self-regulating, moral, economic-rational actors in order to govern them.

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Drawing from notions of ‘creative destruction’ (Theodore and Brenner, 2002) and ‘roll-back’ and ‘roll-out neoliberalism’ (Peck and Tickell, 2002), Gamlen (2012) argues that accounts of neoliberal governmentality in diaspora policies fall short in placing emergent state-diaspora relationships within a wider transition between different phases of neoliberal transformation. Following this line of argument, a distinction can be drawn between Thatcherite forms of neoliberalism focused on the retrenchment of Keynesian welfare-state policies called ‘roll-back neoliberalism’ and the neoliberalist reaction of the Third Way to internal crises of Thatcherite forms by construing ‘roll-out neoliberalism’, focused on the construction of regulatory neoliberal state forms and modes of governance (Peck and Tickell, 2002). According to Gamlen (2012), it is in ‘roll-out neoliberalism’ where rationalities of neoliberal governmentality are adopted. However, he points towards the distinction in treatment that Larner (2007) is making between New Zealand expatriate experts in Europe and the USA on the one hand and overseas communities in Australia on the other, arguing that under ‘roll-back neoliberalism’ social security provisions for New Zealanders in Australia were cut back (Gamlen, 2012). Therefore, Gamlen argues that it is important to place neoliberal governmentality within a wider perspective of the influence of neoliberalism on state-diaspora relationships, since ‘roll-back neoliberalism’ transformed already existing institutional frameworks. In the New Zealand case, the overlap of ‘roll-back’ measurements and the ‘roll-out ethos’ of public-private partnerships meant that ‘some expatriates were celebrated as heroes, while others were relegated further to the margins’ (Gamlen, 2012, p. 247).

Hypothesis

Based upon the above mentioned theories, this thesis hypothesizes that when states conceive of their diasporas as resources of human and financial capital and that when they consider themselves to hold popular instead of territorial sovereignty (Délano and Gamlen, 2014), enabling them to govern a deterritorialized nation through the rationality of neoliberal governmentality (Gamlen, 2014; Larner, 2007; Ragazzi, 2009), home state governments will adopt policies to relax restrictions on emigration that enhance residents’ motility:

H: Home state governments adopting a neoliberal governmentality in their diaspora policies conceive of their diasporas as resources of human and financial capital, consider themselves to hold popular instead of territorial sovereignty and eventually will adopt policies that enhance motility of its residents.

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Research design

Thus, this thesis researches the relationship between the changing state-diaspora relationship and motility of residents of the home country by adopting a hypothesis which presupposes the presence of a complex and contextual process dependent upon the adoption of a neoliberal governmentality by home state governments. So far, we have seen how literature on the proliferation of state-diaspora relationships has gradually shifted its focus from what diasporas are (e.g. Connor, 1986; Tölölyan, 1996) to diaspora policies, arguing that diasporas should not be conceived of as categories of analysis but as categories of practice (Brubaker, 2005). Conceiving of diasporas as categories of practice caused authors to argue that diasporas mainly are state categories. Accordingly, states start to appreciate diasporas as resources of financial and human capital. By adopting neoliberal governmentalities and arguably shifting their attention from ‘territorial’ to ‘popular sovereignty’ (Délano and Gamlen, 2014), home state governments endeavour to bring in both human as financial capital from expatriate communities and descendants of migrants (Gamlen, 2012; 2014; Larner, 2007; Mullings, 2011; Ragazzi, 2009). In order to understand how the adoption of a neoliberal governmentality in Indian diaspora policies leads to emigration policies that enhance Indian residents’ motility, the following sub questions, which are drawn from the literature on diaspora policies, have to be answered:

SQ1: How has the Indian state-diaspora relationship changed along shifts of

government rationalities towards the Indian diaspora?

SQ2: Which overseas communities are framed by the government as the Indian

diaspora?

SQ3: What kind of policy measures has the Indian government taken to engage with its

diaspora?

SQ4: How does the Indian government persuade Indian overseas communities to

engage with India’s developmental agenda?

The dependent variable, the concept of motility, is a very complex one. Kaufmann et al. (2007) argue that motility, the capacity of entities to be mobile in both social and geographic space, consists of three elements: an entity’s actual capacity to be mobile, the access of this entity to mobility and its appropriation of the competence and access elements. Moreover, the Indian state-diaspora relationship, the independent variable, shows strong dependency on contextuality, while neoliberal governmentality as the intervening variable is a

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complex concept. Therefore, the hypothesis can only be applied through a single case study in order to paint the most optimal picture of every single contextual parameter. This section focuses on the research design of this thesis, in which I subsequently will justify the case selection procedure, elaborate on the adopted mixed research methods and elaborate on data selection criteria.

Case selection

The case being selected had to fulfil the following criteria: 1.) It should be situated in the so-called ‘global south’ since emigration and brain drain are mostly considered to be a problem there, 2.) it should have witnessed the emigration of highly educated residents in order to control for the presence of human capital abroad, 3.) its government should have adopted a form of neoliberal governmentality in order to control for the condition that it conceives of itself as a ‘globally connected nation’ holding ‘popular sovereignty’; or it should have liberalized its economy for foreign capital, making it possible to streamline remittances, 4.) it should actively engage in diaspora policies and 5.) it should have an engaging diaspora. Taking these five requirements into account, I should select what Gerring (2007) calls a ‘typical case’. A typical case should be representative of a broader set of cases (Gerring, 2007, pp. 91-92). Furthermore, I had to add a sixth requirement: 6.) One of its official languages must be English since I decided to analyse official documents.

I based my case selection on comparative analyses of diaspora policies, which are underrepresented in the field of diaspora studies. Firstly, Gamlen (2006) examined the diaspora policies of 73 governments, highlighting 15 states for which extensive literature was available. For the other 58 states literature could be found, but this was very fragmented according to Gamlen (2006). Although Gamlen’s (2006) article is exactly one decade old and new research has been conducted and has enlarged the literature on diasporas, I’ll select one of the cases out of Gamlen’s list of 15 countries to be sure that I won’t encounter problems with a gap in the literature which I’m not aiming to fill.

Second of all, Ragazzi (2014) set out to develop a typology of diaspora policies by distinguishing five different types of states which all have adopted different sorts of diaspora policies:

1. ‘Expatriate States’: This group of states is formed around the focus on cultural and educational policies as the most distinguishing factor. These states

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provide state-services to a high-income category of expats. Examples of expatriate states are the UK, France and Germany.

2. ‘Closed States’: This group of states strongly regulates or seeks to restrict the mobility of their population, polices the population abroad and doesn’t allow their population abroad to vote. These policies are accompanied with loss of residence after emigration and an absence of schools abroad. Examples of closed states are Cuba and North Korea.

3. ‘Global Nation-States’: This group of states adopts the widest range of diaspora policy features and provides populations abroad with the broadest number of rights. Examples of global nation-states are India and Ethiopia. 4. ‘The Managed Labour State’: This group of states provisions investment

schemes and welfare for returnees and provisions welfare for populations abroad. Examples of managed labour states are Colombia, Jordan and Brazil. 5. ‘Indifferent States’: This group of states doesn’t organise any symbolic events

such as yearly diaspora conferences dedicated to its population abroad. It possesses a lack of interest to its population abroad. Examples of indifferent states are Australia and Lebanon.

Based on this typology, the case being selected should fall under the heading of the third cluster, the ‘Global-Nation States’ for; the first cluster mainly contains states that are situated in the so-called ‘global north’; governments of countries in the second cluster do not engage with their diasporas in the sense that they seek to financial and human capital remittances; the fourth cluster consists of countries whose governments mainly construe their diasporas as consisting of migrant labourers who are able to remit money, but who do not necessarily hold large resources of human capital; the fifth cluster consists of governments that do not engage with their diasporas at all. Furthermore, governments in the third cluster show striking resemblances with what Larner (2007) calls the ‘globally connected nation’, since governments of these countries adopt a broad range of diaspora policies and thereby construct a deterritorialized nation. Making a combination of Gamlen’s shortlist of governments and Ragazzi’s third cluster in his typology will help me to select the best case, keeping in mind the six abovementioned requirements. The table below (Table 1) displays all the states that appear in Gamlen’s list of fifteen cases for which extensive literature about diaspora policies is available on the left hand side, while all the countries that fall under the heading of ‘Global Nation-States’ are displayed on the right hand side. All the cells coloured

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grey in the table below are countries which are both in Gamlen’s shortlist and Ragazzi’s third cluster of ‘Global Nation-States’. The only country in italics, indicating that it meets the additional language requirement, is India. Therefore, India was selected to be the focus of this thesis and a case study was conducted on India’s state-diaspora relationship and its influence on motility of Indian residents.

Table 1: Case selection criteria

Gamlen's fifteen cases ‘Global Nation-States’ (Ragazzi’s third cluster)

Armenia Australia Mexico Haiti

Turkey New Zealand Turkey India

Greek Cyprus Mexico Croatia Morocco

Morocco Dominican Rep. Ireland Greece

Eritrea Argentina Russia Israel

India Brazil Ethiopia

China Haiti

Philippines

Research Methods

In previous parts of this methodological section on the research design, several sub-questions have been formulated that served as a pathway to answering the research question ‘how did the adoption of a neoliberal governmentality in diaspora policies by the Indian

government cause the Indian government to enhance mobility of its residents?’ However,

before going on to the sections in which these sub-questions will be answered, it is important to register how these sub-questions were answered, i.e. which research methods were adopted.

SQ1 (How has the Indian state-diaspora relationship changed along shifts of

government rationalities towards the Indian diaspora?) and SQ2 (Which overseas communities are framed by the government as the Indian diaspora?) seek to analyse the

nature of the current Indian state-diaspora relationship, but follow the periodization of government rationalities by Ragazzi (2009) in order to understand what the influence of a neoliberal governmentality has been on this relationship. Therefore, I have traced the history of emigration from India and the influence of past state-diaspora relationships on how different groups of expatriate communities and descendants of migrants engage with India’s development and vice versa. The adopted research method that best fitted the goal of this analysis is a literature review of literature on emigration from India and changing identities of overseas communities by the reciprocal process of engagement of both overseas communities

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and the Indian government. After having analysed what is construed by the Indian government as the Indian diaspora through the literature review of case studies to the emergence of the Indian diaspora, it was time to analyse which policy framework was adopted to institutionalize a neoliberal governmentality by answering SQ3 (What kind of policy

measures has the Indian government taken to engage with its diaspora?). Logically,

answering this sub-question required the analysis of policy schemes and reports concerning the diaspora by Indian government institutions. The analysis was done through a content analysis. Lastly, SQ4 (How does the Indian government persuade Indian overseas

communities to engage with India’s developmental agenda?) serves as to understand how the

Indian government frames its policy framework and the established state-diaspora relationship during its direct interactions with expatriates, most notably the earlier mentioned Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD). The required research method to analyse speeches by high Indian officials during diaspora meetings was a discourse analysis.

I presumed that every executed analysis in this thesis would partly cover the rationality behind enhancing motility for Indian residents by the Indian government, for the literature review focusing on emigration from India could point towards changing emigration processes and policies. Secondly, emigration policies could echo through diaspora policy schemes and other official documents by the Indian government. Last of all, in its direct interaction with Indian expatriates, high Indian officials could point towards changing patterns of emigration under the adopted diaspora policy framework. Putting together the mosaic of analyses and results, would therefore not only result into a result section comprising of answers to the sub-questions, but also an answer to the research question.

Data collection and data selection

The data being used consists of case studies to the Indian diaspora and state-diaspora relationships, speeches and statements by Indian high officials and Indian policy schemes, acts, reports by advisory councils, memoranda of understanding with other governments and transnational organisations and audit reports.

Data in the form of case studies was collected through the internet, using online search tools such as CataloguePlus at the UvA-website and http://scholar.google.com. Since I had to read an enormous variety of case studies to the Indian diaspora, varying from case studies about Indian communities in different host states to changing governmental efforts, numerous search terms have been used such as ‘Indian diaspora’, ‘Indian state-diaspora relationship’, ‘Indian diaspora policies’, ‘Indian diaspora strategy’ and ‘Indian emigration’. Furthermore, I

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have searched for useable case studies by reading the bibliographies of the case studies which were found online, creating a snowball effect.

Speeches and statements by high Indian public officials such as presidents, PM’s, Ministers of External Affairs, Ministers of Overseas Indian Affairs and Ministers of State for the same ministries were searched for on the website of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA, http://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?50/Speeches__amp;_Statements), using the search terms ‘diaspora’, ‘Pravasi Bharatiya Divas’ and ‘Overseas Indians’.

Useable official documents such as policy schemes, acts, directives and bi- and multilateral agreements were mostly retrieved through reading case studies and speeches and statements, as they were frequently being referred to. Again, a snowball effect came into use as most schemes and acts were referred to in documents by advisory councils. Most official documents could be retrieved from the website of the Ministry of External Affairs (http://mea.gov.in)

The Indian ‘diaspora strategy’

Many decades before Indian independence, a first form of the Indian diaspora came into existence. Since then, the complex history of emigration from India has run parallel with the countries’ development, causing the diaspora to be still in flux. This complex history of emigration has seen four major waves of emigration from India: 1.) migration under the indentured labour system during the colonial rule; 2.) the emigration of highly qualified Indians after the relaxation of immigration restrictions to high-skilled migrants from Asia by the USA; 3.) migration to the emerging economies of the Gulf region to fill labour supply gaps of low- and semi-skilled work since the 1980s; and 4.) the emigration of high skilled, mainly in the IT- and tech-sectors, professionals to the West since the 1990s. Estimations of the size of the Indian diaspora as ‘that segment of the population living abroad’ and their descendants following the four waves of emigration vary from 20 to 26 million people worldwide. The first part of this results section sets out to trace the complex history of emigration from India to commence the background of diasporas and the Indian state-diaspora relationship. Thereafter, in the second part of this section, the development of the state-diaspora relationship under different government rationalities, along with the waves of emigration will be examined. In the same part, policy measures that were adopted under the government rationalities will be presented. Lastly, in the third part the results of the discourse analysis of speeches by high government officials during gatherings to honour, celebrate and address the diaspora will be presented.

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Part I: Emigration from India

Many argue that emigration from India already started early in the second millennium, but it took overseas communities to take form until 1834, when India was part of the British Empire. After the abolition of slavery, the British rulers were looking for cheap labour forces to face the labour shortages at the plantations in the West Indies, but subsequently looked for labourers to man plantations in their overseas territories in Africa and South-East Asia (Voigt-Graf, 2008, p. 83). This quest for cheap labour forces led to the Indentured Labour System, which eventually saw approximately 3,5 million Indian workers migrate from India to other colonies within the British Empire and overseas territories of the Dutch (Surinam) and French empires. Although the indentured labour system, intentionally to wash away the negative consequences of slavery, required the workers to sign a contract with their employers who paid for their fare to work for at least five years, in practice the system showed similarities with the abolished system of slavery. Many workers died during their fares to their destinations, were exploited and received only very low wages. However, freed from the harsh reality of the caste system in their newly adopted countries, many migrant workers preferred to stay in their countries of destination instead of opting for the possibility of letting their employers pay for a return fare to India (Voigt-Graf, 2008).

Secondly, the USA government lifted restrictions on immigration from Asia in 1965, enabling Asian professionals to migrate to the USA. This development attracted Indian migrants who primarily sought better educational and professional opportunities than in India (Bhattacharya, 2008, p. 69). According to Bhattacharya (2008), this wave of migration mainly attracted Indian professionals whose aspirations and believes in life success resembled the values and beliefs of mainstream 1960s and 1970s middle-class American values and beliefs. Focusing on raising their socio-economic status in their newly adopted society and turning their aspirations and beliefs into reality, assimilation in the American society became key for this second big wave of Indian migrants (Bhattacharya, 2008). Next to the USA, this period also saw migration from India to Canada, the UK and other West-European countries of migrants with similar socio-economic backgrounds (HLC, 2001, p. VII).

The third wave of migration from India followed the so-called construction boom in the Gulf region in the 1970s and saw millions of un- and low-skilled workers migrate from India’s rural areas to the booming oil states of the Middle East. The inability of the Indian workers to acquire citizenship of their destination countries caused this wave to be of circulatory nature similar to guest worker programs in Europe. However, as the economies of the oil producing states in the Middle East started to develop into economies with large

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service sectors and established major transportation hubs, the demand for cheap low- and semi-skilled labour from abroad remained very high. This demand is reflected by the still increasing numbers of Indian migrants in the six GCC-nations (table 2).

Table 2: 'populations of overseas Indians in GCC countries 2002-2012' (ICM, 2013, p. 12)

Country 2002 2012 Increase Percentage

Bahrain 130,000 350,000 220,000 169.2 Kuwait 295,000 579,390 284,390 96.4 Oman 312,000 718,642 406,642 130.3 Qatar 131,000 500,000 369,000 281.7 Saudi-Arabia 1,500,000 1,789,000 289,000 19.3 UAE 950,000 1,750,000 800,000 84.2 Total 3,318,000 5,687,032 2,369,032 71.4

Just as the wave of emigration to the Gulf region, the fourth and last major wave of emigration from India is still going on. This last major wave followed the coming together of two independent developments: the promotion of the development of the Indian IT-sector by the BJP government in the 1990s (Radhakrishnan, 2008) and the constitution of India as a ‘information technology power’ (ICM, 2013, p. 11) on the one hand and another revision of the Immigration Act in the USA in 1990 on the other. The revision encompassed a provision of temporary migration to the USA of people with specialized knowledge that was short at hand in the USA. Of all the people that received a so-called H-1B visa since the implementation of the new Immigration Act in 1990, half of them was of Indian origin and migrated to the large IT-hub of Silicon Valley to fill the labour supply gap of IT-professionals (Ibid). Where the revision of the Immigration Act 1965 only allowed for the immigration of highly qualified relatives of migrated professionals from India, the 1990 revision furthermore provisioned the immigration of also low-skilled relatives of migrants who came into the country under the 1965 act. This extension of the act saw an influx of mainly low-skilled Indians who were not granted access in 1965 (Bhattacharya, 2008, p. 69). Between the 1990 revision and 2000, the Indian population in the USA grew from little over 800.000 to approximately 1.9 million people, 70% of whom was born outside of the United States. 70% of the 2.9 million population of people of Indian origin in 2010 arrived in the US after 1991 (ICM, 2013, p. 11). The high-skilled IT-professionals that came into the country under the 1990 Immigration Act settled in Silicon Valley, while the low-skilled immigrants went to the largest US cities. Accordingly, the Indian community in NYC grew by 118% between 1990 and 2000 (Bhattacharya, 2008, p. 65), most of whom ending up doing service/blue-collar

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work (Ibid, p. 76). After the success of the US IT-industry, other Western countries were soon to follow and allowed for the immigration of Indian IT-professionals.

Part II: The development of the state-diaspora relationship

So far we have seen that four major waves of emigration from India have taken place since the 19th century, constituting overseas Indian communities in every outer corner of the world such as the Caribbean, the USA the Gulf Region and the South Pacific. Furthermore, differences in terms of socio-economic positions between overseas communities can be traced back to the nature of the wave of emigration that constituted those communities. This second part of the results section presents the results of SQ1, SQ2 and SQ3; the literature review concerning the state-diaspora relationship to how this relationship has changed over time and how past relationships play a role in the current affairs between the overseas communities and the Indian government, together with the results of the content analysis to official documents of the Indian diaspora policy framework.

Indentured labourers: forever lost

A relationship has never emerged between overseas communities consisting of indentured labourers and the Indian state. First of all, these indentured labourers migrated during the colonial rule and were impoverished to such an extent that they were dependent upon employers to pay for their fares from India to their newly adopted countries and they did not choose to make use of their right to return to India (Voigt-Graf, 2008). Furthermore, most of the indentured labourers were illiterate and were therefore unable to stay in touch with their family members in India and therefore slowly lost connection with their homelands. In the first half of the twentieth century, between the abolition of the indentured system at the end of WWI and Indian independence in 1947, a Gandhian approach to overseas Indian communities was adopted by Indian nationalists (Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, 2003, pp. 4009-12). This Gandhian approach, according to Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, did not so much seek to establish a territorially bounded nation, as to focus on identification with exploited Indians both in India as overseas. After India’s independence, however, a different, Nehruvian, approach was adopted. According to this approach, adopted under the prime ministership of Nehru, ‘expatriate Indians had forfeited their Indian citizenship and identity by moving abroad and did not need the support of their mother country’ (Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, 2003, p. 4010). In Nehru’s view, overseas Indians should assimilate and settle, creating an Indianness based on blending in (Dickinson and Bailey, p. 762). Furthermore, Nehru constitutionalized a

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prohibition on dual citizenship (HLC, 2001). The absence of a state-diaspora relationship and hence a ‘simultaneity of connection’ (Levitt and Glick-Schiller, 2004) between communities of indentured labourers and their descendants on the one hand and the Indian state on the other is further illustrated by Bhattacharya (2008) and Voigt-Graf (2008), who demonstrate that secondary migration from destinations of indentured labour migration to other countries created transnational spaces around these first countries of destination instead of India (Voigt-Graf, 2008) and uncovers the enormous cultural differences between secondary migrants and immigrants who directly came from India in some new destination countries such as the USA and Australia (Bhattacharya, 2008; Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, 2003; Voigt-Graf, 2008). E.g., as Voigt-Graf (2008, p. 86) shows, the poor political and economic position of Indo-Fijians in Fiji – mostly descendants of originally indentured labourers – have caused approximately 150.000 Indo-Fijians to resettle in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Canada. Furthermore, Voigt-Graf (2008) cleverly notes that India had no relevance as a country of resettlement. This resettlement resulted in a constant flow of people, money, goods and ideas across the Pacific Ocean (Voigt-Graf, 2008, pp. 104-5), constructing more of an Indo-Fijian diaspora around Fiji than a community within the Indian diaspora. Next to the little interest shown in overseas communities born out of the indentured labour system by the Indian government under the Nehruvian approach, Voigt-Graf (p. 87) argues that the formation of diasporas around destination countries emanates from the cultural cleavages between native Indians and descendants of indentured labourers. The indentured labour system itself broke down the caste system among indentured labourers and hence created a cultural cleavage between the descendants of indentured labourers and descendants of those who stayed back home. Migrants ate and slept together during their ship voyage and on the plantations, causing a more individualistic and more egalitarian society to emerge in Fiji with cultural homogenisation taking place among Indo-Fijians across regional, religious and caste lines (Voigt-Graf, 2008). The literature review conducted by Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball (2003) shows the same cultural cleavage between some of the few returning Indo-Surinamese migrants and Indians:

(…) Another, more important motivation was the inability of return migrants to get used to the Indian life again. De Klerk illustrates this with a story of a migrant, who after return to his home village sat down on a 'charpoy' (local style bed) in front of his house one day, as he used to do in Surinam. A Brahman, who saw him sitting there, beat the man on the head with his wooden sandal. Members of the

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man's caste were supposed to sit on the floor. The incident made him realise that he no longer wanted to live in such oppressing environment. As soon as he was able, he returned to Surinam for good [ibid:157].” (Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, 2003, p. 4013).

Bhattacharya (2008, p. 68) remarks in her case study to the lives of people of Indian origin in New York City, that the diaspora community of Indians who migrated directly from India varies culturally from diaspora communities of Indians who secondary migrated from the Caribbean, arguing that Caribbean Indians tend to identify themselves with their countries of birth instead of India. Furthermore, as Bhattacharya (2008, p. 68) notes, ‘each of these two Indian groups has its own neighbourhoods, radio programmes, community festivals and transnational connections’.

By conducting semi-structured household interviews in Fiji, Australia and India, Voigt-Graf (2008) also showed that apart from the apathy towards India by descendants of indentured labourers, little attention is being paid to the history of indentured labour in India:

“There was also little awareness of Fiji in the general population in India. Of the 52 respondents in India, 41 were unable to name any country with an Indian population of indentured origin. The majority associated the Indian diaspora exclusively with North America, the UK, Australia and sometimes the Gulf States but not with countries such as Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and South Africa (Voigt-Graf, 2008, p. 47).”

In short, a relationship has never emerged between the Indian government and overseas communities consisting of indentured labourers and their descendants. After India’s independence, the Indian government urged overseas communities to integrate into their newly adopted countries. At the same time, indentured labourers started to develop their own culture, that was so far differentiated from Indian culture that waves of secondary migration have established new diasporic networks around these destination countries such as Fiji. Arguably, both the lack of effort by the Indian government to engage with these overseas communities as the social and cultural changes that have taken within these groups of overseas communities, have caused the Indian government not to engage with these overseas communities under a neoliberal governmentality.

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Highly qualified Indians in the West: adoption of the Vajpayeean approach

The combination of the will of Indian migrants from the second wave to assimilate in their newly adopted countries and the by the Indian government embraced Nehruvian approach, caused many migrants in the West to acquire passports of those countries who therefore lost their Indian citizenship under the constitutional prohibition of dual citizenship in India (HLC, 2001, pp. 359-60). This will to assimilate is reflected by the observation that young generations of India’s elites, in opposition to pre-1965 generations of elites such as the first prime minister of India and Cambridge graduate Jawaharlal Nehru and the third prime minister of India and Oxford graduate Indira Gandhi, did not choose to return to India after graduation (Kapur, 2004, p. 372). However, at the end of this second wave, between 1977 and 1979, a new approach in opposition to the Nehruvian approach started to emerge. This Vajpayeean approach, spawned by former External Affairs Minister (1977 to 1979) and later Prime Minister (1996, 1998-2004) Atal Bihari Vajpayee, enabled overseas Indians to return and acquire Indian passports by developing new laws (Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, 2003, p. 4010). The coalition government of the late 1970s, however, was only short-lived and had not been able to break the Nehruvian approach on the state-diaspora relationship.

The opposition to the Nehruvian approach, however, continued to argue that the Indian state failed to let overseas Indians, who were not legally but still emotionally bonded to India, bring in their funds which they were willingly to spend (Ibid, p. 4011). The liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1980s, the economic crisis that hit India in the early 1990s and the increasing economic forces of globalisation in the same era ignited further opposition to the Nehruvian view and a return to the Gandhian view, combined with a new narrative holding that ‘groups settled in a place are not necessarily of it’ (Dickinson and Bailey, 2007, p. 763; Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, 2003, p. 4011). At the end of the 1980s and in the early 1990s, India faced an enormous balance of payments problem and therefore saw itself confronted with the threat of IMF loans and the accompanied required economic reforms (Lall, 2001). While companies started to retreat their investments out of India, the Indian government turned towards their overseas communities to bail them out (Ibid, p. 169). Furthermore, Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) were starting to be seen as ‘Trojan horses’ for India’s political and economic interests abroad (Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ball, 2003, p. 4012). The return to the overseas Indian communities by the Indian government was accompanied by an effort to combat an increasing sense of sub-nationalism and regionalism in India. (Ibid, p. 4011). This effort took the form of transnationally emphasising an Indian nationality, based on nationalist Hinduism. The newly adopted political paradigm by Vajpayee’s BJP-party that came into

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government in the 1990s caused India to turn its attention to the overseas communities for the first time in more than fifty years, who in their turn - as proud Indians - were willing to engage with the buzzing new, globalizing, nationalistic India showing its muscles to the world by setting nuclear tests into motion (Radhakrishnan, 2008).

Clearly, the described change from the Nehruvian to Vajpayeean approach is a reflection of Ragazzi’s (2009) notion of ‘disciplinary’ and ‘neoliberal’ rationalities for the GoI started to constitute a diaspora policy framework under the Vajpayeean approach. This policy framework was a reaction to the urge of PIOs for more in return of their financial remittances than a sense of proudness on India alone, asked for a revision of the constitutional prohibition on dual citizenship:

“The desire and the demand for dual citizenship was particularly strongly articulated by substantial segments of Indians in the countries of Europe and North America. To many of them, the idea of dual citizenship means an affirmation of their Indian nationality and identity. Many of them and their children are post-Independence immigrants to the western countries. (…) They continue to cherish their Indian identity (HLC, 2001, p. 359).

Dropping the prohibition would enable overseas Indians to acquire an Indian passport and thereby provide them with the opportunity to enjoy easy access to the country, fiscal benefits and access to the political institutions by electing representatives or standing for election themselves. Furthermore, arguments in favour of granting the overseas community dual citizenship were raised stating that it would promote a further free flow of capital, investment and human resources as people enjoy easier access to the country and it would provide PIOs with ‘better legal rights to urban real estate and other kinds of moveable and immovable properties in India’, all enhancing India’s economy (HLC, 2001, p. 360). An earlier attempt to acquire dual citizenship in 1992 was not accepted ‘in view of various constitutional, legal, political and security implications’ (Ibid), which, combined with the then still dominant Nehruvian sentiments against the political interference of outsiders, caused the Government of India (GoI) to develop a PIO Card Scheme instead.

This PIO Card Scheme, launched in March 1999, comprised of a PIO Card which could be bought by foreign citizens 1.) who had held an Indian passport at any time; 2.) whose either of his/her parents, grandparents or great grandparents was born in and had been a permanently resident in India; or 3.) who was a spouse of an Indian citizen or a person of

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Indian origin. Furthermore, the PIO Card according to the March 1999 Scheme would be valid for twenty years and a US $ 1000 fee was asked to applicants which included a US $ 250 non-refundable processing fee. In return for their thousand dollars, PIOs were provided with PIO Cards that facilitated them with the advantage of not requiring a visa to visit India and a 180 days exemption from the requirement of registration with the Foreigners Registration Office during a stay in India. Besides, PIO Card holders enjoyed parity with Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) in respect of all facilities available to NRIs in economic, financial and educational fields, except in matters relating to the acquisition of agricultural and plantation properties. No political rights were allowed to PIOs with the PIO Card Scheme (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2002, July 19th).

In 2000, the Ministry of External Affairs established a High Level Committee (HLC) on the Indian Diaspora and charged it with the task of ‘making policy recommendations for facilitating their [the diaspora] interaction with India and continued participation in its economic development’ (Dickinson and Bailey, 2007, p. 763). These policy recommendations were to be stemmed from a study to the ‘characteristics, aspirations, attitudes, requirements, strengths and weaknesses of the Indian diaspora and their expectations from India’ which was to be conducted by that HLC. Moreover, based on its study, the HLC was asked to do recommendations regarding the PIO Card Scheme since only 1,100 PIOs applied for and obtained the PIO Card in the first year-and-a-half after implementation of the scheme (HLC, 2001).

Concerning the relative failure of the scheme, the HLC observed that the most important reason not to acquire a PIO Card was that PIOs found the costs of acquiring the PIO Card to be too excessive, but other reasons were ‘a lack of information and publicity’ and that some of the foreign passport holders of Indian origin felt ‘that a PIO Card is a poor substitute for dual citizenship’ (Ibid, pp. 361-2). Therefore, the HLC was of the view that the MEA should project the scheme ‘as a part of the bridge-building exercise and not as a revenue-raising project’ (Ibid, 361-2) and recommended the MEA to introduce a ten-year PIO Card next to the twenty-year PIO Card at a lower fee. To convince more young generations of PIOs to obtain a PIO Card, the HLC furthermore recommended to provide PIOs of up to 18 years old with twenty-year cards at the cost of the ten-year cards (Ibid, p. 364). Besides, in order to thrust the purchase of special Ten Year India Development Bonds, the HLC recommended the MEA to provide PIO purchasers of these bonds with a gratis PIO Card valid for ten years (Ibid, p. 367). Lastly, to make the PIO Card more attractive to PIOs, the HLC recommended the MEA to create ‘separate counters for PIO Card holders at all international airports in

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India’ and the abolition of the requirement to produce a proof residence in order to issue driving licenses in India when producing a PIO Card (Ibid, p. 367).

Starting off from the notion that establishing close contacts and appreciating each other’s needs and strengths ‘would doubtless be mutually beneficial’ to the Indian diaspora and India (Ibid, p. 377-378), combined with the HLC’s view ‘that the achievements and the goodwill [of the Indian diaspora] towards India should be recognised and celebrated in India and abroad in an appropriate manner’ (Ibid, p. 379), the HLC recommended that an annual event should be organised in order to meet these intentions. This initiative, named Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD), which eventually was first held on January 9th 2003, was meant to promote bonds between India and its diaspora and between various components of the diaspora itself and was recommended to consist of the following programmes: a business and promotion seminar to promote business opportunities in India; an academic seminar on various socio-political and cultural issues; a projection of India’s diversity in order to promote India’s tourism industry; a sports event; and an exhibition on the Indian diaspora accompanied with a trade fair and a film festival (Ibid, pp. 379-81).

The last important recommendation by the HLC was based on the HLC’s conviction that ‘the diaspora is an important factor in India’s external relations with the countries [inhabited by its diaspora]’ and that ‘the diaspora has great potential to play an important role in the multifaceted development of India’ (Ibid, pp. 567-8). However, every section of the diaspora spoken with by the HLC plead for a single-window mechanism for its interaction with India instead of the often experienced multi-layered bureaucracy which discouraged many diasporans to engage with India. Therefore, the recommendation read that a coherent policy and a streamlined, single contact point organisation in the form of a ‘funded, well-staffed, empowered and dedicated organisation’ was absolutely necessary. Furthermore, the organisation should be provided with a grievance redressal system and should give special consideration to problems faced by NRIs in the Gulf region (Ibid, pp. 567-8), to which I will turn later in this presentation of results. Eventually, this recommendation was listened to by the GoI with the establishment of the Ministry of Non-Residents Indians’ Affairs in May 2004, renamed as the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) in September 2004. The MOIA consisted of the former Emigration Division of the Ministry of Labour and Employment and the former NRI Division of MEA. According to the introductory chapter of the report of the Standing Committee on External Affairs on the demands for grants by the MOIA 2015-2016, the mission of the MOIA was as follows: