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These articles keep popping up— Harsh Goenka recently said, forget millionaires, even billionaires aren’t coming back to India.
When they get angry with their current base, they move elsewhere—but not home. Interesting point.
But here’s mine: apart from Gandhi, Mohan Bhargava and me , who really came back?
Migration history is clear. People fleeing atrocities—from Indians in British colonies facing Idi Amin’s Africa to caste bias and poverty at home—moved to colonies, then the UK, then the USA, where they became massive successes.
Gandhi was pushed out of first-class and harassed sending him into a spiral of reforms; but a large mass of others was crammed in third, without objections and they are still moving on.
I’ve lived among them—third, second generations. Everyone has a story. Many left for opportunities, worked in colonies since the 1700s, sailed on ships, or joined the doctor, pharma, nursing exodus of the 60s, or the tech wave of the 80s–2000s. Most trained in India’s elite universities.
They are fiercely loyal to their adopted lands—running IT, hospitals, transport, motels, SMEs, large enterprises. Yet they remain stuck in a time-warped view of India.
They’ll spend thousands on SRK shows in Atlantic City or selfies with politicians, cheer growth projections, and claim “Desi pride” at cultural events, even as they resent new H1Bs.- You got in too easy.
But I feel wherever you go, whatever money you make, the land you come from defines how the world sees you.
Once, during my research, I found villages in Western UP and Bihar crippled by fluoride in water, too much river pollution.
An NGO distributing ROs asked me - Bhaisab you are there, please represent us in a Wall Street fundraiser in Marriot downtown.
Everything was going well till, they started the pictures of children with deformed bones bringing in $20, $50 donations and I called on stage for a few words.
Behind my Brooks Brothers, Cavin Kleins and Ralf Laurens I could feel it—they were looking for bent bones.
That image of India sticks. No matter the money, Indians abroad can’t shed it. Ridicule follows—even Kamala Harris, Vivek Ramaswamy, Sundar Pichai: “We laid railroads, Indians squatted on them.”
So the real point isn’t just why billionaires won’t return.
It’s: what are you going to do about the image we all live with?
I write and speak on the matters of relevance for technology, economics, environment, politics and social sciences with an Indian philosophical pivot.
