Kusum Choppra

Decades after we outgrew what used to be an annual begging bowl exercise to extricate foreign aid from developed donors, India this week returned to the Begging Bowl syndrome;   this time with prospective NRI donors during the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas extravaganza. Chief minister after chief minister, central ministers and bigwigs of India Inc. presented the NRIs with a smorgasbord of investment options of every variety.   They cheerfully ran down each other to get ahead of the pack, extolling their own backyards, conveniently forgetting the sorry record of both state and private enterprises. Nary a word uttered on what the NRIs might want or need, any problems they might be facing in their own homelands with their respective administrations.   Don’t we all know how little India does for its citizens abroad; what of Persons of Indian Origin scattered around the world? Do those persons actually consider themselves Indians first, after generations in far-flung post...

Just over two weeks in Singapore, reading their major mainstream newspaper Straits Times every single day left me with a sorry conclusion: Indian Singaporeans and migrants are the invisibles of Singapore.    Reading the thirty odd pages of the newspaper leaves the impression that despite their longevity in that island, persons of Indian descent have not made any noteworthy contribution to the nation state, economically, politically, socially, culturally, in the arena of sports, arts, whatever……. Despite the wholehearted embrace of the system by younger generations, be it medicine, banking, teaching, industry, retail, special needs, real estate, education, the media and events …. You name it and the young people are doing it. There is little news of India in newspapers dominated by immediate neighbors, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam etc.   India only shows up with rape reports and bad news.   When I spoke of some developmeents, my young ...