Sunday, 13 Oct, 2024
There has been a flurry of reports in media about record number of Indians renouncing their citizenship
There has been a flurry of reports in media about record number of Indians renouncing their citizenship. In a reply given in the Parliament recently, it was stated that 1,63,370 Indians renounced their citizenship. This is a record. The figures for 2000 and 2019 were 85.256 and 144,017. A digital platform The Federal has done a story arguing that the number of Indians renouncing their citizenship has seen a marked rise after Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of India. The portal is not the only one to suggest that an increasing number of Indians are giving up their citizenship because of the policies adopted by the current regime. Some critics have argued that Indians are voting with their feet against the regime. They also argues that the best talent of India is giving up on their country because they see a bleak future ahead. The old “brain drain” theory is being revived with an additional proviso that the kind of policies pursued by the Narendra Modi regime is magnifying the “Quit India” process. India Tracker is concerned with data, and not political controversies. What does the data say?
Source: Ministry of Home Affairs
The accompanying chart shows that critics of the Narendra Modi regime could be factually right. But just looking at these numbers and accepting them at face value doesn’t do justice to either data or data driven analysis. Firstly, an overwhelming majority of Indians do not have the resources to even contemplate migration and eventual citizenship in a “better” country. Hardly any Indian amongst the millions working in the Arab countries will ever get citizenship. Most of those who renounce their citizenship live in countries like the United States, Canada, UK and Australia. The fact is, since the 1960s, a lot of Indians who went for higher studies to these countries became citizens of these countries after years of effort. The number of students going abroad has now exploded and it is inevitable that a lot of them will renounce Indian citizenship in the years to come for better economic prospects.
Source: Ministry of External Affairs
Have a look at the massive increase in the number of students who are going to overseas colleges and universities since this century began. From about 55,000 in the year 2000, the number increased sharply to 144,000 in 2009. By 2019, the numbers had galloped ahead to 588,000. The pandemic slowed down the process but the pace has picked up again. Between 2009 and 2019, about 20 million students have gone abroad for studies. They are in the job market in those countries. So lets say 1 million Indians renounced citizenship between 2014 and 2022. That works out to 1 in 20 Indians who had the opportunity to take citizenship of a “better” country and took it.
The data clearly indicates that a very small proportion of Indian students who go to overseas institutions for studies ends up renouncing citizenship. But the absolute numbers will keep rising as more and more Indians families can afford the astronomical fees and living costs abroad to send their children abroad. What has that got to do with Narendra Modi?
