Indians Love the English speaking NRI

SO Hi, Hi, Bigger American Pie - Views - livemint.com

“It’s been two years since my family and I moved to India, a time span that happened to be the deadline to at least decide if our future lies here or there. (note the opportunism opportunism here) … this past summer, my husband and I would stay up late and discuss, debate, even argue. India had been great for his career, he would say. He felt creative and reinvigorated … “But I am tired,” I said. “It’s not just working at a start-up. It’s running the household, the uncertainty of water coming out of the tap, the driver showing up. And I cannot have one more parent-teacher meeting about my moral opposition to colouring in the lines. The school thinks I am crazy.” (note the desire for ready-to-eat solutions, the closed mind).

A NRI newspaper desk-editor recently wrote the above extract.

Westernized Indians, unsure about going through the grind of re-building a nation, escaped to the West. And still do. They expect us poor desis to have a ready made nation for them. They will of course parachute into the country - and if they don't approve, they will take the next flight out.

The poorer country cousin of the Westernized NRI, is the desi-NRI. The desi-NRI, went out to make some money in sundry parts of the world (especially the Middle East). The desi-NRI worked hard - and never gave up on India. It is the remittances from the desi-NRI that have been bridging India’s current account deficit. For all this, the desi-NRI, the poorer brother, has never got the respect for his contributions - and the Westernized NRI is lionized.

The desi-NRI, can’t speak English, you see.

And by the way, nations do not get built that way.

Vir Sanghvi had another interesting observation. (via Have you faced the new Asian tigers? - Columnist - livemint.com).

However, there’s another phenomenon that I believe is on the rise: racism by brown people against other brown people. Or let me put it differently: discrimination directed at Indians by Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Kenyan Asians, etc.) who live abroad.

It could be a coincidence but almost the only times I’ve ever had trouble at Heathrow immigration is when there’s been an Asian manning the desk. My own visa status is slightly complicated. Though I have an Indian passport, I have right of residence in the UK because I was born in London.

Another Report from Times Of India states:

Overly zealous British home ministry officials are “humiliating, harassing and abusing” legal Indian and other migrants at airports across the country, a campaigning group said on Thursday.

“Though migrants are used to discrimination and harassment, these new revelations show how the treatment of legal immigrants by border control now has stooped to the lowest of levels,” the Highly Skilled Migrants Programme (HSMP) Forum said in a statement.

IANS is a rather dubious agency which floated that hoax story about the Indian hacker some back. Vir Sanghvi can move from the sublime to bathos.

After reading these three together - I am beginning to wonder!

Worth a thought!