Indian Americans' success story: Talent, meritocracy, and risk-taking

At an India conference at Stanford University, co-sponsored by the Tata Group in 2022, Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor, shared a surprising story about her time when George W Bush was running for President in 2000. After she and her team had briefed the then-presidential candidate on important countries, but with nothing on India, he turned to her and said, “What About India?” He noted that he met very smart Indians — doctors, lawyers, engineers — in his constituency in Texas. He suggested she go back and take another look at India. This interest in India, sparked by Indian Americans impressing

 

Mr Bush, eventually led to the nuclear deal between him and then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, where Indian Americans lobbied their senators and congresspeople to help finalise the agreement. US-India relations have moved onwards and upwards ever since.

 

In 1970, there were 0.5 million Indian Americans, a number that had risen to about 1.6 million by 2000, when Mr Bush became President. Today, there are over 5 million documented Indian Americans (1.4 per cent of the US population), a tenfold increase since 1970. They now form the largest group of overseas Indians. Not only have the numbers increased rapidly, their success has been spectacular. Indian Americans — now have the highest median income of around $145,000 in 2022 — over 50 per cent higher than that of whites, and even higher than Jews and other Asians. They are also the most educated, with 82 per cent having college degrees. They make up almost 9 per cent of the doctors in the US, lead top IT companies as CEOs, and have recently made significant strides in politics. Kamala Harris rose to become a Senator, Vice-President, and Democratic Presidential nominee. Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina, UN Ambassador and a Republican Presidential Contender. Usha Chilukuri Vance will be the Second Lady of the US in the next administration.

 

In a fascinating book, Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America (HarperCollins India, 2024), Meenakshi Ahamed profiles Ms Haley and 19 successful Indian Americans whom she considers geniuses for finding unconventional paths to success. She focuses on three groups —Techies, Medicine Men, and Influencers. The Techies group is the largest and includes pioneers like Kanwal Rekhi, Suhas Patil, Vinod Khosla, Santosh Mehrotra, and Vinod Dham, along with three “company men,” as she calls them: Shantanu Narayen, Satya Nadella, and Nikesh Arora. Mr Rekhi’s most enduring contribution was the founding of TiE Global, an amazing group he co-founded to foster and encourage entrepreneurship among Indian Americans, which now has 61 chapters all over the world. Among the “Medicine Men” Deepak Chopra, Atul Gawande, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Abraham Verghese and the two-term Surgeon General Vivek Murthy are covered. The last group “Influencers” includes two elected politicians, Nikki Haley and Ro Khanna, as well as Neal Katyal, a pathbreaking constitutional lawyer, and TV host Fareed Zakaria. Ms Ahamed also focuses on two extraordinarily successful sisters: Chandrika Tandon and Indra Nooyi, the former CEO of PepsiCo. Ms Tandon became a partner at McKinsey, ran her own bank restructuring company, was nominated for two Grammy Awards in Music, and established the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU.

 

Indians have also excelled in other fields. They have won Nobel Prizes, including Har Gobind Khorana in Medicine, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in Physics, Venkat Ramakrishnan in Chemistry, and Amartya Sen and Abhijit Banerjee in Economics. M Night Shyamalan, an Oscar nominated moviemaker, astronaut Kalpana Chawla, Ajay Banga President of the World Bank, Sundar Pichai CEO of Google, and writer Jhumpa Lahiri are among those who have made a mark.

 

Why have so many Indian Americans done so well? Most did not come from privileged backgrounds, as the book shows, but rose to the top of their professions through education, determination, innate skills, and following their instincts. Many benefited from subsidised high-quality education at Indian institutions like the IITs and AIIMS. While they could have thrived in India, their genius flourished in America, where meritocracy is rewarded, and risk-taking is encouraged.

 

In contrast, as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak notes in the book, innovation and risk-taking are not emphasised in India, and otherwise successful Indian IT companies spend surprisingly little on research & development, with no global innovations to their name. This culture is changing to some extent with Hurun’s Global Unicorn Index showing India ranked third, behind the US and China in the number of unicorns—startups valued at over $1 billion.

 

Not all is shining for Indian America. Indians also make up the third-largest groups of illegal migrants in America, estimated at around 0.8 million. They spend their families’ fortunes or take huge debt to get to America via extremely dangerous circuitous “Dunki” routes, where many perish and those who arrive in their dreamland “Amrika” end up getting exploited on farms, in motels, or in restaurants. These routes and those who enter illegally will be aggressively targeted by the Trump administration. He has already threatened Mexico and Canada with 25 per cent tariffs if they fail to control their borders.

 

In the 1980s and 1990s, there was huge concern in India about “brain drain” as many Indian doctors and engineers moved to the US and other wealthy countries. However, with rising US-India cooperation, and overseas Indians not only sending back substantial remittances but also investing in Indian startups and social programmes, that concern has diminished. In fact, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, instituted by the Vajpayee government in 2003 to recognise the contributions of overseas Indians, is announced every year on January 9 to mark the day Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa.

 

As India moves up the development ladder, fewer people will want to leave and more Indian Americans will want to come back and enrich India with their knowledge and expertise. A small trickle has already started returning, but for now, unless the US becomes extremely hostile to even legal migration, the number of Indian Americans will continue to rise. Their increasing wealth, influence, and political clout will play a significant role in shaping US policy towards India and further strengthening the ties that George Bush so presciently recognised way back in 2000.

 

The author is distinguished visiting scholar, George Washington University, and non-resident senior fellow, The Atlantic Council, Washington DC