Tracking the global footprints of the Indian wayfarer

Like people elsewhere globally, Indians have been emigrating to different parts of the world for centuries now. Merchants and seafarers from India’s coastal communities traveled both westward to Africa’s shores and eastward to South East Asia much before the era of colonisation. The movement of Indians took a different route with the advent of the British imperial regime when, between the 16th and 18th centuries, thousands of Indian labourers were sent as indentured labour to work on plantations in areas under the empire such as the Carribean, Indian Ocean rim countries, South East Asia and even the Pacific.This, some historians call the old Indian diaspora. Kingsley David, who has authored Population of India and Pakistan estimates that as many as 30 million Indians emigrated between 1834 and 1947. The absolute numbers of such migrants declined after the indenture system was done away with in 1921.
Postindependence, a large number of Indians emigrated to the UK and continue to do so - Indians are still the largest group with non-EU origins to enter British borders.
The history of contemporary Indian emigration has been comprehensively studied and presented in a Jawaharlal Nehru University study titled India Migration Report 2009: Past, Present and the Future Outlook edited by Binod Khadria. It points out that Indian emigration patterns went through a significant shift, peaking in the mid-1960s, when Indians started moving away from the colonial periphery to metropolitan centres of the Commonwealth. Later on, Indians shifted their focus to Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Meanwhile, another trajectory was being explored by a different set of emigrants from India. This lot, mainly low-skilled and semi-skilled workers, headed towards the Gulf, where demand for such labour in new oil economies boomed during the mid’70s. According to the ministry of labour, nearly 936,257 people went to Gulf countries for employment between 1979 and 1982. Even today, Saudi Arabia and UAE are the top two hosts of Indian immigrants though the number of Indians returning from the Gulf countries has also been steadily increasing due to various factors.
The 1990s saw the next big change in emigration patterns from India. This is when thousands of Indian software professionals started realising the great American dream. Even though the US has introduced stricter HIB norms, the inflow of Indians into the US grows at a steady pace. In fact, Indians now form the third largest ethnic minority, behind Mexicans and Filipinos, in the US.
The profile of the Indian immigrant too has evolved over time. Take for instance, the type of Indian headed to the UK. Where once it was largely Punjabi and Gujarati entrepreneurs (who set up restaurants and momand-pop stores) and doctors moving to Britain, the proportion of white-collar workers from the services sector making their way to the UK has increased, thanks largely to changes in UK’s immigration policy.
Even in the US, the profile of the Indian immigrant is fast evolving. Motel Patels, IT professionals, and students -- who comprise the largest section of foreign students in the US -- constitute the biggest chunk of the Indian presence there. But the newage entrepreneur is fast rising too. According to a study conducted by the India-US World Affairs Institute of Washington, the Robert H Smith School of Business of the University of Maryland, and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, 90 Indian companies made 127 greenfield investments worth $5.5 billion between 2004 and 2009, and created 16,576 jobs in the US. During the same period, 239 Indian companies made 372 acquisitions in the US, creating more than 40,000 jobs. (A "greenfield investment" is a form of foreign direct investment where a parent company starts a new venture in a foreign country by constructing new operational facilities from the ground up).
Today, the Gulf, America, Australia, the UK, Canada, and South-East Asia have emerged as top choices for Indian immigrants. The Gulf remains the top destination for semi-skilled workers and nurses. But the so-called ‘knowledge workers’, who include bankers, IT professionals, lawyers, and doctors, to name a few, have their eyes trained on America, Australia, Canada and the UK. And students from here cannot stop flocking to American, Australian and British shores.
Going forward, India is poised to send out more of its people. This is largely due to the demographic dividend we are set to reap. As the advanced world ages rapidly, creating demand for skilled manpower, young India’s manpower surplus is set to rise exponentially, paving the way for many more desis to travel far and wide.