Why diaspora matters? Examining influence of US-based Indians in politics

PM Narendra Modi has attended at least half a dozen diaspora events in the US from his first visit in September 2014 to his eighth in June 2023

In an interview in January 2015, a month before the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spectacularly swept the Delhi Assembly polls, party chief Arvind Kejriwal conceded in an interview to a news agency that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “appeal” had “affected” his party’s diaspora support.

Until then, for Kejriwal and his associates, who launched AAP in November 2012, support from the Indian diaspora, especially Indian Americans, was substantial to its coffers and its election campaigning. A United Progressive Alliance government probe in early 2014 found that almost a fifth of the funds AAP raised through crowdsourcing came from