Sunanda K Datta-Ray: For a few dollars more

WHERE MONEY TALKS

Had we anticipated the NRI windfall, we'd have welcomed them a lot more, long ago

The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas reminded me of driving one year to Port Dickson for the Malaysian Bengalee Association's Kali Puja. Ours was a Bengali convoy, most with Singaporean or Malaysian passports with a sprinkling of expatriates like me. All non-resident Indians, but it took a Bengali family that had migrated from mofussil Midnapore to Baltimore a couple of years ago, to show why NRI is sometimes spelt "Not really Indian" or "Not reliable Indian".

They demanded McDonald, Burger King or KFC when we stopped for refreshments, the road being dotted with Chinese, Indian and Malay eating houses where the food is cheap, clean and delicious. They fretted all the way about squatting lavatories at Port Dickson; agreeably surprised on arrival to find commodes, they still spurned the airy flats opening on sea and shingle that had been reserved because the bathrooms had only showers and they yearned for long baths. Someone explained that a jet of cold water was far more refreshing and hygienic in the hot tropics than wallowing in a tub of stale, lukewarm soapy water. "In the States we use long baths!" they replied and disappeared to look for rooms with acceptable facilities.

I don't know what restaurants and bathrooms in Hyderabad were like but, of course, there are NRIs and NRIs, from Mahatma Gandhi, the "Great Pravasi", to my friend who takes great pains to boast that after 40 years in Frankfurt he has not succumbed to European culture or cuisine. Ethnicity must be the only link between cosmopolitan Fareed Zakaria, one of the 15 recipients of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, and Bhojpuri labourers in Fiji. Sharp differences mark even the same catchment. Many successful Tamil Singaporeans are superciliously dismissive about India. But an elderly Sikh lawyer there told me after Pokharan Two, "I shall never go back but a strong India makes me feel stronger here."

Their problems are not the same either. Hindus in Britain want to cremate their dead on open pyres. Workers in the Persian Gulf say wages are paid late or not paid at all. Reunion's francophone Indians are rediscovering an identity of which they were long denied. In Fiji, they have suffered blatant political discrimination.

But two things are common to almost the entire Indian diaspora of 30 million souls. And that is high expectation on both sides.

All Indians abroad feel that Bharat Mata doesn't do enough for them. They grumble in Dubai that the emigration authorities turn a blind eye when recruiting agencies send out blue collar workers on visitor's visas instead of job visas, landing them in endless trouble and expense on arrival. The allegation in Singapore was that our passport offices (again, in collusion with recruiting agencies) omitted emigration clearance for migrant labourers, thereby exposing them to the cane. Other complaints range from insurance to medical treatment, legal protection to political support.

In India, the appetite for investible funds has been whetted by last year's record remittance, nearly double the $12 billion sent back by seven million Filipinos who constitute Asia's biggest expatriate workforce. This seemed inconceivable in those dark days of 1991 and 1992 when the first Gulf War and domestic improvidence drove us almost to bankruptcy, expatriates compounding distress by withdrawing $2 billion, half the sum pulled out between April and June 1991 alone.

The NRI bonanza seemed even more remote in 1968, when David Ennals, Britain's home secretary, reminded me that Jawaharlal Nehru had advised Indian settlers to identify with their countries of adoption. The occasion was New Delhi's pressure on Britain to take East African Indians. "They should return to India," Ennals said, arguing that there was only a technical claim on a Britain they had never seen. "If you don't mind my saying so," he continued, "India knows it's got us by the short and curly!" Also, of course, India had no idea then that NRIs could mean a windfall.

Had we suspected we would probably long ago have showered them with multiple entry visas, exemption from police registration, right to property, voting rights, dual passports, the right to contest elections, hold public office, and whatever else they might think of. Of course, the gifts may be only notional. For, if the three million workers and professionals in West Asian countries will "never become naturalised citizens of those countries", as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says, they retain their Indian citizenship and all that goes with it, including the vote. One can't give them what they have never lost. I can't understand either why Overseas Citizenship of India cards, meaningless though they seem to be, should be bestowed only on two American citizens.

Perhaps our Baltimore Bengalis also qualify. I hadn't expected to see them again in Port Dickson but they returned an hour later, tired and disappointed. Yes, they had found a smart hotel with long baths but the charge was exorbitant. Was there still a suite left in our block? We received them back with open arms. A bit saved in Port Dickson might mean a little more remitted next year. That's what NRIs are for, after all.