The Pravasi Bharati Divas and India’s diaspora outreach through the ‘economy of affection’: rhetoric and realities

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper is a critique of India’s highly selective current foreign policy engagement among its diaspora populations, with special reference to medical graduates from the South African Indian diaspora. It begins from the realistic position that India cannot possibly be expected to accommodate the needs of all of its 25 million diaspora spread out in the different countries in which they are resident. But they can, as respondents for this project emphasized, possibly be more creative in the ways that they engage with intellectual and innovative potential from the diaspora populations that are not from the elitist entrepreneurial segments. In South Africa for instance, people of Indian origin (PIOs) medical graduates continue to suffer consequences of the inhibitive affirmative action policies in the country. Restricted to the African majority, affirmative action and budgetary restraints in health care delivery are denying hundreds of PIO graduates from acquiring Registrar posts that will lead them towards specialized medical qualifications. Against the background of such restraints many graduates are considering finding alternative relief outside of South Africa, and are raising questions about what the Indian state could do to nurture their talents. In view of this reality, this paper will engage in a brief overview of the non-resident Indian and PIO contributions to India’s foreign exchange reserves and development; how the state of India can possibly consider this situation for its longer term benefit, and how Goran Hyden’s theory of the ‘economy of affection’ can be implemented to develop a more inclusive nexus between the diaspora populations and their ancestral homeland.